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ours—
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Venerated Delegation,
the starry sky above the thinking reed
and moral law within it—
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Most Reverend Deputation,
such success does not come twice
and perhaps beneath this single sun alone—
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Inestimable Council,
how deft the hands,
how eloquent the lips,
what a head on these shoulders—
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Supremest of Courts,
so much responsibility in place of a vanished tail—

Pursuit
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I know I’ll be greeted by silence, but still.
No uproar, no fanfare, no applause, but still.
No alarm bells, and nothing alarming.
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I don’t expect even a shriveled leaf,
to say nothing of silver palaces and gardens,
venerable elders, righteous laws,
wisdom in crystal balls, but still.
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I understand that I don’t walk the moon
in search of ladies’ rings and vanished ribbons.
They pick everything up in advance.
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Nothing left to suggest that . . .
Trash, castoffs, peelings, scraps, crumbs,
chips, shavings, shards, bits, pieces.
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Of course I only bend over a pebble
that bears no hint of where they’ve gone.
They don’t like leaving signs.
They’re peerless in the art of erasing traces.
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I’ve known it for ages: the gift of vanishing just in time,
their divine ungraspability by horns or tail,
by the hem of a robe ballooning in flight.
A hair never falls from their heads that I might snatch.
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They’re always one thought smarter,
one step ahead, I can never catch up,
they let me play at being first.
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They aren’t there, they never were, but still
I have to keep telling myself,
don’t be a child, stop seeing things.
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And whatever just hopped from underfoot
didn’t get far, it toppled over, trampled,
and though it stirs again
and emits a long-drawn muteness,
it’s a shadow—too much my own to point the way.

A Speech at the Lost-and-Found
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I lost a few goddesses while moving south to north,
and also some gods while moving east to west.
I let several stars go out for good, they can’t be traced.
An island or two sank on me, they’re lost at sea.
I’m not even sure exactly where I left my claws,
who’s got my fur coat, who’s living in my shell.
My siblings died the day I left for dry land
and only one small bone recalls that anniversary in me.
I’ve shed my skin, squandered vertebrae and legs,
taken leave of my senses time and again.
I’ve long since closed my third eye to all that,
washed my fins of it and shrugged my branches.
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Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me
how little now remains, one first person sing., temporarily
declined in human form, just now making such a fuss
about a blue umbrella left yesterday on a bus.

Astonishment
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Why, after all, this one and not the rest?
Why this specific self, not in a nest,
but a house? Sewn up not in scales, but skin?
Not topped off by a leaf, but by a face?
Why on earth now, on Tuesday of all days,
and why on earth, pinned down by this star’s pin?
In spite of years of my not being here?
In spite of seas of all these dates and fates,
these cells, celestials, and coelenterates?
What is it really that made me appear
neither an inch nor half a globe too far,
neither a minute nor eons too early?
What made me fill myself with me so squarely?
Why am I staring now into the dark
and muttering this unending monologue
just like the growling thing we call a dog?

Birthday
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So much world all at once—how it rustles and bustles!
Moraines and morays and morasses and mussels,
the flame, the flamingo, the flounder, the feather—
how to line them all up, how to put them together?
All the thickets and crickets and creepers and creeks!
The beeches and leeches alone could take weeks.
Chinchillas, gorillas, and sarsaparillas—
thanks so much, but all this excess of kindness could kill us.
Where’s the jar for this burgeoning burdock, brooks’ babble,
rooks’