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By the end, you will have suffered from it all:
At first you didn’t understand why people
That you worked with would think about you, quibble
With how you lived your life. Now you know fall
And rise, how a life has more to do with lies.
How jealousy is understandable,
Revenge the toothpick in the gums, to trouble
Even you. There is a bitterness in ways
Of seeing: those heavy, layered wines; the bread
Poisoned. Come, sit down. My favorite is the crust.
It’s not that the last supper was the last;

There’s nothing I can’t find under there.
Voices in the trees, the missing pages
of the sea.
—Li-Young Lee, “Pillow”

The trees rattle and whisper and shriek,
harboring in their leaves
messages we have forgotten we need.

Voices in the wind
reciting from the missing pages:

Sibilants and squelch, repeating
pebbles rolling in the surf,
salty bubbles evaporating in the breeze,
the hiss of foam collapsing,
sand sifting through the wasp-waist of time.

When the bird feeders lie barren
for a few days, as I have forgotten
to buy seeds or your mom wants to rid

the yard of the cowbirds and starlings,
and they begin to sway without rhythm
in the summer winds, the mourning doves

come, bound by what they pursue,
uninterrupted, picking the lost seeds
among the shells—these gleaners

profiting on the sporadic eating
habits of the finches. Forgive me
for not acknowledging the finches

You were that kind of guy. The kind to think
That you were better than the others. That’s
The curse, you see. I knew that you would blame
Circumstances and the atmosphere.
That’s how it is: You are what you most fear.
You think you know your shining, private name:
You don’t. It is the language of your secrets.
You couldn’t believe that you’d deny. To think

A boy is walking home from seventh grade,
Happy because it’s Friday and because
Pure sun is setting leaves on fire, although
He doesn’t really see the reds and golds
Flaming along the way he always goes.
The radiance pulls him, and he feels its pull.
In minutes, he’ll be home and changed and out,
Throwing around a football with a friend.
In Vietnam, the war is ramping up.
The boy hasn’t yet heard of Vietnam,
Nor does he know that war is prophecy
And adamant, perpetual self-fulfillment.

the closest
I have been
to vision

was a yellow
tree, every leaf
touched

flame, angels,
apparition—
but the saints

say a sight of
God happens
in a moment,

the beat of
a moth’s wings:
fold and open

“Where are we?” she asks again and again.
“Home” says my father at 103, his faculties
Grounded, rooted in flesh despite being
On hospice, his heart giving out with
My mother unknowing, mind porous as sand.
“Where are we?” she asks him. “When are we
Leaving?” “We’re not,” says my father,
“This is our home.”