Trujillo

Pink centimeters of corn

the kinds that are too tough

you chose them in the market

Parakeet hanging up beside the linen

laundry line, low hanging electricity

My feet often burn when I sleep

Corn, feed the grey pieces to the parakeet

Pull a linen drape across her cage

Is it a pity that she does not speak?

The market: it is a cool day

for you to walk cane-less

one heel thicker than the other

You ask me to steady you

as we climb the ruin

you excavated as a child

before they brought electricity

washing machines

Take two rocks between your fingers

bend with your strong knee

to touch my burning feet

Kernels of corn -- I know you

Pull back the drapes

parakeet, one heel thick

Atlantic Letter, Third Draft

From this knee-deep tide, between the sand

and the tongue of the Atlantic sea,

the white of sails is reflected in the waves.

The fathers of our fathers stand

beneath the cosmic map, a western wind.

The leaves here are new,

though for many millennia they have grown

in the Old World; seeds caught between the heels

of knights crossing the desert of what is now

pronounced Lebanon.

Love is a strange thing.

When in the morning I drove to these low tides

I wanted to believe that I had forgotten

the hollowness in the center of your back.

We cannot choose the parts of the body we will forget.

The moon wants to forget that in one thousand years

she will break, scatter through the darkness

touching the arms and legs of her earth.