“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.”
                                       Percy Bysshe Shelley


At night, the white caps I feared are pillows
to rest my head upon. I am content
to talk with souls who spent nine months floating
in the dark sea of Mary. Don Juan
is no ladies’ ship splintered by romance.
These years have made me fitful with visions.
A child claps like a naked deity while friends
bloody and mangled, arrive to report my house
is falling down. This womb is crowded with weeds.
Mary will laugh to learn how I stayed alive lecturing
god about my unborn children. A fishnet will drag
me to the sands of Lerici where my heart will beat
until she finds me. It drums as steady in a gull’s mouth
as in my wife’s hands, when she returns
                        

STAY near me—do not take thy flight!
A little longer stay in sight!  William Wordsworth

I would have made a bad mother, you said. Shuttered
milk eyes, the way I search for white deer 

where there are none.  I saw one once, a freak
of nature, a ghost or a symbol of some other god,

one I was sure to be jealous of. You said so many things,
I could not love. We had two wash basins side by side,

“renew thyself”, you said.  And the thought of cleansing
my body so close to yours, within minutes of that pass; 

all I could think was the sponging off, the tinkling of water
against skin like wind chimes, never to be put into a breath

or a thought. The roof, at this time, housed a family of doves
and they taunted me, cooing and brooding overhead, scratching

and clawing on the roof.  What did they want, I wondered?
If they wanted peace, I wanted them to be different

like the white deer. I wanted them to raise their family
and shove off, leave us to our business.  I think I wanted

to be an inky bat, waiting to creep the bedcovers, waiting
to steal your breath.  Poised as I was to write it all down, leave

my own bloody mark. I wanted to suckle your blood, snatch flies
from the air. All women want to eat their babies, I told you.

You will say I have imagined this when our affection
is pure.  I think that my journal is not free enough to talk.

Perhaps the sponge and water know the truth of it.
When I put my nose to the crumbs of skin, when I bring

the fountain of you out to the garden, the worms,
the ready earth, are thirsty for what we have.
                        

And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

The train that brings me to him has a snoot full
of diesel, which reminds me of a snood that I am wearing
on my hair. My mother would know, but John is dying, 

who cares about words? He’s already dead by some accounts, 
this city bile rising in his throat. We are in Rome, I am thumbing

through his pages. I am touching his fever, laying my hands
on his face like fronds.   I am the doctor sent to cure him, I am
sitting on the edge of his cot pleading with worms and blades,

trying to bleed him. I am his final miracle, I am the one who will coax
him back to life with each piss-colored pass of broth to his lips.

His lungs rise like a porridge that scalds the stove, bubbling down
the front of his chest.  John is half dead.  I am distressed. He rasps 
and pleads in fits and starts,  her name bubbling blood on his lips. 

I tell him to tell me plain. His friend waits for me in the museum 
heart throbbing under the floorboards, I want to know which woman 

did them in? I lay my head on his chest, he begs for laudanum, thinks
I am Fanny. The museum closes in 25 minutes, but I am reading
him To Sleep. He tells me there is coin in his purse and to help

myself. He tells me his pocket watch is ticking past the museum’s
closing, to not fret over him, to give Percy his best regards.