Jorie Graham

Midwinter. Dead of. I own you says my mind. Own what, own

                    whom. I look up. Own the looking at us

say the cuttlefish branchings, lichen-black, moist. Also

...

One day: stronger wind than anyone expected. Stronger than           ever before in the recording           of such. Un- natural says the news. Also the body says it. Which part of the body – I look           down, can...

Deep autumn & the mistake occurs, the plum tree blossoms, twelve blossoms on three different branches, which for us, personally, means none this coming spring or perhaps none on just those branches on which just now lands, suddenly, a grey-gold migratory bird – still here? – crisping, multiplying the wrong air, shifting branches with small hops, then stilling –...

(Attempt of 6 June ’03)

I wake and one of them is still there, still talking, sudden jolts of hand as if to slap open the air, garbage waiting at the curb, myself a slave, still, yes, I check, a slave, mist on the hedgerows, stubblefields between. A slave. Beyond, the village still asleep. That I can say the word village. Thorns disappearing now under the last of the blossoming....

From here, ten to fourteen rows of folding and branching. Up close, the laving in overlappings that pool sideways as well as suck back. Filamentary green-trims where the temporary furthest coming-forward is lost. Suctions in three or four different directions back from pinnacle-point. Encounter of back-suck by the foremost, low-breaking, upstitching really,...