And I’m dazzled by you all over again.
The ornaments you made—satin,
ribbons, sequins, pearly pushpins—
ornate and elegant as Fabergé eggs—
rim the tree.

		The painting in white
silhouette of Don Quixote astride
Rocinante, the palm-sized brass cylinder
etched with the Little Prince, his rose,
and the fox—you knew my heart, the one
now pierced with your memory.

						You
lived in the palm of art. Was the beauty
too much to bear?

			The year we drove
to Ladysmith to visit the artist, your beau,
my uncle—your fawn-colored suede jacket
a perfect metaphor for you—warm, supple,
refined.

		I never saw you with your horses
but envision their hooves hammering
your demons to granular bits, only to have
them rise up again—dust devils of the soul.
In the end, you could not tame them.

							Every
year now, your ornaments circle the bottom-
most branches of the Christmas tree. Glittering
hem, dew-jeweled flowers, whimsical satellites
orbiting a dark sun. 
                        

Since the cancer two years ago, I look for omens everywhere.
Today, walking down a driveway, I saw a shirtless old man. I love your art,
I confessed. His smile revealed a gap the width of two nickels,
his bald pink gum reminiscent of the barrenness on the top of his skull,
its skin the color of a pecan shell and ringed by a ruff of silvery gray hair
like a laurel wreath. I hope what I do makes people a little happy,
he says. It’s he who strings wires from rooftop to treetop
to treetop and hangs upon them whatever might catch the light
and toss it back—currently, dozens of glass tubes, brass candlesticks,
coffee cups, a colander, glass baubles, bottles, and goblets,
the rusty blade of a crosscut saw, and a gleaming brass platter
somehow reminiscent of Don Quixote’s Golden Helmet of Mambrino.
A trio of giant white seashells float in a blue sky. Inside a chain-link
fence sloping from the train tracks, two ceramic horse heads glazed
a shimmery black. I wanted to hold onto every detail, greedy for images
to transform into words. I notice, then, the leafy tree festooned
with rusted railroad spikes, bound into bouquets of four or so.
I especially love, I say, how different it is every time I come here—
sometimes without even knowing that’s where I was headed. He says,
Nothing in life ever remains unchanged, tells me his name is Louie,
shakes my hand. Be careful, I think to say as I leave, on those ladders.
The wires hang two stories high, and he is not a youngster.
That’s like telling a monkey not to fall out of the tree, he laughs.
How can this day be anything short of dazzling? 
                        

Her nose roams the weeds
like any good investigative reporter
looking for the hottest news,
the Lois Lane of Lhasa Apsos,
Lurchers, and Labradoodles.
If sniffing proves insufficient
to parse a scent, she will lay
her tongue on a blade of grass
to taste the smell as well.
In a breeze, her nose twitches
like a divining rod, separating
the wee from the chaff. Always,
she’s addressing the journalist’s
standard questions: who, what,
where, and when. In her nine years,
she must have collected millions
of points of data. I will never
know what she knows, her nasal
wisdom thousands of times greater
than my own. What does she do
with all that information? Perhaps
she does nothing. Perhaps
it’s enough simply to know.