There are eagles here. Kwan-Yin, who was your favorite
(and often your password), shows me the Three Friends,
the dancing-girl hawks, the hardy garden flowers
crushed in a vase. Their intent? To curate each other’s welfare.

I humbly beseech – who? That desolate, fugitive wife
driven to seek refuge? Is death a refuge? I don’t think so.
Death knows no cartography.

Still, a woman plays the lute. There are proper English ladies.
I swear it. No, I don’t have to swear at all. You can’t hear me.
I, the observer, suspended, magnified six thousand times,
seek refuge in earthquakes, Galvanism, even strangers.

Her long, greying hair hid her eyes – in a certain book,
water stains all too many of the pages. A great annoyance.
Or ingratitude, a shocking instance thereof.

Here, I often lose the thread of my thoughts
as I wander the willow-draped junkyard behind my mind.
I live in a city where the smell of smog wraps me like yarn.
(We once collected scents; beginners often chose vanilla.)

A coal dust Christmas in a charcoal dollhouse.
The sparrow lies down with the manticore,
as the elephant shall lie down with the frog.

Your clock has struck thirteen.