HOMAGE TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
                       
My half-love for things,
such as cars and buildings—
I seem to have grown into it.
I consider myself not
unhappy.
 
I see, between buildings,
through my windshield,
mountains: the idea
of nature as unnecessary
basis.
 
I walk away from my
parked car as if
from an unpainted
backdrop at the back of
a real stage.  
 
I half-sense, behind me,
a dog weaving its
leash-bearer through
long pauses, and scents.
I stray
 
off the sidewalk,
and walk on the long
rectangle of bare grass:
the idea of roots rising
up, and becoming excessive flowers.


THREE QUESTIONS

After the lost fawn, struck dumb by my presence
as I walked on the dirt road that runs past my house,
bounded back into the woods, was it no longer lost?
No matter how diminished by the wide world,
 
my life always matters, which means what?
The dim light inside the woods on either side
of the road is the thin bone from which all skin
is born, but where was I after the lost fawn bounded
 
back into the world? I just kept on walking.
Behind me, in the light like the light inside
a church: one broken answer, or two. Ahead of me,
in the light: multiplication, fruitfulness falling
like pine needles onto a soft floor, and being.