Dutchman’s Pipe

If I took a photograph of my thumb-smudge on a window and called it “Comet,” I would still be accurate. Burning, burning. I do not believe in inspiration or in the idea that some mysterious power needs to borrow my throat for a megaphone. If, though, the very first moment felt as ache-sweet as a blister on the roof of my mouth giving way, then I can understand the Creation.

Crab Nebula

On Tuesday I’ll starting thinking about the National Gallery on Thursday, how I’ll linger near Tintoretto’s Worship of the Golden Calf or Pollock’s Lavender Mist. Then on Thursday, after Van Gogh and Rembrandt’s self-portraits, I’ll take the subway to Border’s and spend an hour reading Four Four Two. Or I’ll start out for the bookstore and I’ll just keep walking and remember how in Little League a parent threw a foul ball back onto the field and hit me, playing first base and refusing to look up despite calls of “heads up,” on, what else, the head. Now whenever I stand around in sunlight, which takes eight minutes to travel from the sun to my forearm, I’ll realize that the sun could have exploded seven minutes and fifty seconds ago. After a while, though, I’ll go inside to get a drink of water or buy a toothbrush. I don’t want to get skin cancer, the pattern repeating itself cell after cell after cell after cell.

American Elm

“Penumbra” is a word whose meaning I can never quite put my finger on. Fortunately, that turns out to be the meaning of the word. You’re right: I apologize too much. Sorry about that. People who say “to say the least” usually go on to say a lot more. The odd thing about the feeling that I’m falling just before I go to sleep is that I’m already stretched out flat.

Arbor Vitae

I’ve never stared at the sun, but many times I’ve looked at a robin’s orange belly. Now each time I go to the doctor, I’m more nearsighted. I like a high horizon line. It makes what’s before me “ground” twice, both as the earth and as the backdrop that the things of the earth separate themselves from. The Explorer had its fog lights on, too. That way, its driver could blind me, yet he still wouldn’t be driving with his brights on.