Next door at the Humane Society 
the dogs are barking. Our town has made 
a New York channel with the story: 
dogs confiscated from an owner 
who now wants them back. The trial's dragged on 
for months, and till it's settled, the dogs
can't be adopted by new owners.  

Hauling a plastic bag of trash, I climb
the rickety metal stairs to the landing,
upend the bag and shake its contents
into the open hatch of the paper
and catalog trailer, larger than my
kitchen, almost full. Sliding down the hill
of paper is the last Sears catalog,
which I was tempted to save. As long as
they kept coming, they were of no value,
but last things appreciate. It's Tuesday,
I'm the only one here, so I can linger
gazing down into that huge bin of
correspondence. A sheaf of bright coupons
catches my eye, as it is made to do,
and redeems a lost word: rotogravure.
The surprising rhyme for you're in "Easter
Parade." Today the rotary press itself 
is obsolete, like the name the process 
gave to the newspaper supplement.  
Now the remembered lines of the song 
yield Easter bonnets and the parade, 
which survives as a parody of itself.
At least the sonnet has not disappeared.

I've crumpled or shredded to confetti 
receipts with our VISA number 
and ripped into quarters even unclaimed 
student papers, so no one can reuse 
their words. Though each semester
"from the beginning of time" and "let us 
hope in the future" keep creeping back.
This heap is so high I can still read
the lists I've discarded—house repairs,
friends invited to the party and dishes
they'll bring. Paint back porch stairs, 
wash windows, prune roses, take recycling,
and here I am a month later, one more 
item to check off the new list at home.
I wonder if we should reuse the same list:
do laundry, check car, get groceries, 
and the grocery lists, too, which resemble
variations on a theme. 

				Afraid to leave 
evidence of our lives within easy reach, 
I push our trash out toward the edges.  
This exposes someone else's recycling, 
an unfamiliar script, and leaves of notebook
paper, a child's homework. The blue lines
filled with textbook letters remind me 
of our sons' first printing and the merge of
letters into cursive, leaning into 
a distinctive style. This bin must be run
through with such laborious practice,
the alphabet we need for this volume
of words. Beyond the homework lies a pack
of letters tied with a faded ribbon.
Tradition dictates what they are, yet who
would discard them whole? Burning's preferred,
both thorough and symbolic. What is dead?
Both lovers?  Love?  And who decided
they should end at this communal site?

Less and less needs to be hoarded, as it
all comes back, though sometimes in another
form, like those stymied poems I've shredded
and discarded.  Up through recycled paper
old words rise in new configurations,
as even now the stars are shifting
Cassiopeia and Orion.  And here
a postcard shows no earthly destination,
but a huge full moon. I need not 
turn it over to know its news. Always 
waxing and waning, its white face 
making the dogs lift their muzzles and howl
for a new master, any one.

Buried in the far pasture, the white mare
I used to pass as I walked.
No matter how I called or whistled,
she seldom looked up.

The snow melts and the grass grows long
in the field where the mare grazed.
After the birds and leaves have gone,
my neighbor finds a nest
lined with a riddle in its hollow
of fine, dark twigs:

white coil of hair
from her mare’s tail.

The woman carries the nest
inside, sets it near her drawings,
sculptures of shells, wings, bones.

For weeks she lives with the nest
that recalls the tail flicking flies,
twitch of flesh beneath the curry brush.
And on her palm, the inquiring lips.

One day with pencil and paper
twig by twig she weaves a nest.
Strand by strand she braids the hair.
She props the nest she has made
beside the other.

I carry the images home:
coil of white hair, artist, drawing, nest,
mare I never rode, or even touched.

How long inside its shell
the poem stirs and changes,
then taps its way out.

Still, the absence we pass in the field
will not look up.