After A Disaster Strikes, It Can Be

I Sit At My Desk Each Night With No Place To Go, Opening The Wrinkled Maps Of Milwaukee And Buffalo, The Whole U.s., Its Cemeteries, Its Arbitrary Time Zones, Through Routes Like Small Veins, Capitals Like Small Stones.

I Did Not Know The Woman I Would Be Nor That Blood Would Bloom In Me Each Month Like An Exotic Flower, Nor That Children, Two Monuments, Would Break From Between My Legs.

... A Starving Man Doesn't Ask What The Meal Is.

Only My Books Anoint Me, And A Few Friends, Those Who Reach Into My Veins.

The Summer Has Seized You, As When, Last Month In Amalfi, I Saw Lemons As Large As Your Desk-side Globe-that Miniature Map Of The World-and I Could Mention, Too, The Market Stalls Of Mushrooms And Garlic Bugs All Engorged. Or I Even Think Of The Orchard Next Door, Where The Berries Are Done And The Apples Are Beginning To Swell. And Once, With Our First Backyard,i Remember I Planted An Acre Of Yellow Beans We Couldn't Eat.