The damselfly folds its wings
over its body when at rest. Captured,
it should not be killed...

Frame within frame, the evolving conversation   
is dancelike, as though two could play   
at improvising snowflakes’...

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping...

I would my soul were like the bird   
That dares the vastness undeterred.   
Look, where the bluebird on the bough   ...

Then came the darker sooner,
came the later lower.
We were no longer a sweeter-here...

I leant upon a coppice gate
      When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate...

Five daughters, in the slant light on the porch,
are bickering. The eldest has come home
with new truths she can hardly wait to teach....

Every morning since the time changed
I have woken to the dawn chorus
And even before it sounded, I dreamed of it...

After the cocoon I was in a human body
instead of a butterfly’s. All along my back
...

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine...