as the shuffle of cards
for a pinochle game
���������������������������������the wind begins;

a faint hiss and whistle from the parlor
carrying the secrets of adults after-dark,

������from their beds, children strain to listen

*

I started talking to the man
from Mars because he invited it,
there in the caf� courtyard

he could have painted at home
on his kitchen table - with his cups
of gray dishwater and his battered tin

but he chose to do so among
the clove-cigarette smokers and iced-tea drinkers -
and the chess players

��������������������who also wished to be watched
even in their guarded muteness
over a bishop�s�����sandpaper�����slide,
�����a soft hand-slap on the timer

*

the barometer plunges, frantic air
whips the dog into white-eyed parabolas
through skeleton underbrush

she�s staring at the knees of a giraffe -
it�s bigger than her,
��������������������������������what�s coming

electrons split the sky

*

it began as mere persiflage -
a French banter, a Latin hiss and whistle

����������������������������������I looked over his shoulder
while the Mars-man boxed three separate spaces
with long vertical stripes and horizontal dashes
in the watercolours of a tulip garden

I found freedom in the stares of those
around us as he answered my questions
in the English he'd learned from satellite signals

his spaceship on the bottom
of Boston Harbor,
������������������������������he couldn't go home

*

plo�ra, plo�ra, plo�ra from the tree frogs
��������it will rain, it will rain, it will rain

and it does - cats and dogs and frogs -
over an opaque sugar-cube sky,

this world is not the same as before,
aquarium light transfigures trees
and grasses
��������������������into cloudy-green absinthe

the green fairy of Rimbaud - �certain skies
sharpened my vision�

������������������I can wait but others will run

*

though I'm a terrible liar, perhaps I could
convince myself - tell a tale so fantastic

������������that nothing else I do ever surprises

secrets after-dark, after-death,
the children sing

����������������������������the worms crawl in,
��������the worms crawl out, the worms
��������play pea-knuckle in your snout

*

you can cut them into postcards, he'd said,
handing me the sheet of Arches paper
with its trio of rectangular flower plots

��������������I could - and let loose a shout, full
��������������������������������������of what I might say

Slow Trains Fall '02