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A switch touches too many lamps
our lonely house can't find the other planets
their gravity draws upon your canopy bed
brings quiet blue fire to the seams
and where I walked your floorboards
naked as a feather now I wear
a suit of armor that can be seen
everywhere people have no need of it
tulips bent from wrestles in public gardens
hang head from green glass rims
pistil and stamen pretzeled
the arch of bridges that never end
even when the river's crossed bank to bank

Black branches half sunk
darkened by water adorned
by snails matched to shade of bark
cousins tread like brothers and sisters in shells
across the knobby parallels
a switch is touched off in the larger trunks
where the homeless slide off their bicycles
and leave them to rust through human ages
to become unused material again

Eyes no longer berserk with fuel or lack
I wonder what foxes might be messengers of
coils from earth like wine
wind around broken limbs lift
body many times born
in a sky-casket
of twigs and rubber
nickels pawed over
raw and ornate to a hotel room
where mirrors of self-sex beam
an image back to places where it can't belong
the foxes pad the doorstep
rubber and coins and cage of twigs snap open
the body falls out like a contact lens
from the moon's beam back in the empty house
the switches ghost pulse
to send you back through all your doorway beds
where I am no longer waiting
for the river to cross nothing.