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When I think of what I know about America,
I think of kissing my best friend’s wife
in the parking lot of the zoo one afternoon,

just over the wall from the lion’s cage.
One minute making small talk, the next
my face was moving down to meet her

wet and open, upturned mouth.
It was a kind of patriotic act,
pledging our allegiance to the pleasure
and not the consequence, crossing over the border

of what we were supposed to do,
burning our bridges and making our bed
to an orchestra of screaming birds

and the smell of elephant manure. Over her shoulder
I could see the sun, burning palely in the winter sky
and I thought of my friend, who always tries

to see the good in situations—how an innocence
like that shouldn’t be betrayed.
Then she took my lip between her teeth,

I slipped my hand inside her skirt and felt
my principles blinking out behind me
like streetlights in a town where I had never

lived, to which I never intended to return.
And who was left to speak of what had happened?
And who would ever be brave, or lonely,

or free enough to ask?

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

I’ve become the person who talks to avocados.
Oh, look how ripe you are!

The one who talks to dust bunnies under the bed.
Oh, my goodness. How long have you been there?

I’ve become the person who narrates wind as it gusts,
the one who composes out loud while writing poems.

In short, I’m the person who once mystified me.
Does she really think lettuce seeds can hear her?

And I love being this woman who converses with stars,
with shadows, this person who notices feelings that rise

as I move through a day and takes pleasure in greeting them.
Hello shame. I say. Hello fear. Hello embarrassment.

How much easier life is when I join in the big conversation.
Then I am never alone. Not that the bananas talk back.

Neither does the mop. But that doesn’t stop me
from being curious about my connection with all of it—

the stain on the dishtowel, the pond as it melts,
the broken pot, the robin in the yard, the highway trash.

It’s not the talking part I love, but letting my attention
touch everything. Cracked glass. A lost glove. Tire tracks.

Mostly, I love the listening for what isn’t said back.

Why so many forms?
Why not just that one
hydrogen atom?

The creator goes off
on one wild, specific
tangent after another,
or millions simultaneously,
with an exuberance
that would seem to be
unwarranted, and with
an abandoned energy sprung
from an unfathomable font.

What is going on here?
The point of the dragonfly’s
terrible lip, the giant water bug,
birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle
and flash of sunlighted minnows,
is not that it all fits together
like clockwork – for it doesn’t,
particularly, not even inside
the goldfish bowl – but that
it all flows so freely and wild,
like the creek, that it all surges
in such a free, fringed tangle.

Freedom is the world’s water
and weather, the world’s nourishment
freely given, its soil and sap:
and the creator loves pizzazz.

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

We live on a planet
where trees whisper
to one another
through mycelial networks.
Where octopuses with nine brains dream,
and whales with hearts the size of small pianos sing,
calling each other by name.
Where elephants mourn their lost,
standing in silent vigil
over the bones of their kin.
Where bees dance
to the flowers,
and crows remember faces
never forgetting a slight.
Where ants build vast metropolises,
cats purr at the exact frequency of healing,
and the forest’s first breath after a fire
is a bloom of flowers.
Beauty and wonder are everywhere.
Life far more then we can imagine
Far more than we can even dream.
Walk softly upon this earth
There is room for ever more miracles.

it’s late now, it’s early, no way
to know which season it is
of the total years of my life,
weren’t we only just nineteen,
tonya & i, wasn’t she only just
alive, long-limbed & cross-legged
on my dorm room floor,
wasn’t it springtime of a year
so unlike this one, thirteen
years past, cool nights in line
outside the nuyorican hoping
to make it on the list, wasn’t it
a friday night like this one
& the only people i wanted to love
were poets, earrings swaying
against their necks, dancing
in the dark of the room where we
all knew each other’s secrets, weren’t
we all just at that party, wasn’t i only
just eighteen, pointed northward
on a chinatown bus to that city,
to watch ai elo onstage at the apollo,
wasn’t she only just alive, smoking
with camonghne, asking me my favorite
song, cackling on the apartment floor,
on the air mattress we used as a couch,
how is it that it was long ago, how is it
i am on the other side of it, long ago, how
did i leave that city, that time when we
were all together, everyone alive,
wasn’t the dream to be a poet, wasn’t
the plan to live forever, our powers
newly acquired, newly in love
with what we could do, didn’t we all
belong to each other, to that work,
going after to the pizza shop
to recite what we’d memorized,
weren’t we all just there, wasn’t it warm
outside, wasn’t the road long & clear,
isn’t it early still, isn’t it late, & why
am i still here, did i survive or was i left
behind, & what season is it that we are
no longer together & some of us have gone?

To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. Against the shadow
of veiled possibility my workdays stand
in a most asking light. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind’s service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.