The Garden Boston is the middle of my life.The thatched roof over the middle of my lifeAnd the fire turning in the middle of my life Are yours. To be cold there in our cornerBedroom—the evening whir of an electric heaterThat can’t forstall the inevitable   Nor’easters like violins, Anxiety lickingHer length by the clock, Orion and his clubPassing silently over—   With promises deep and as far away as spring,Where the pink bulb of a hot water bottle you placeBetween us heats us like a coal   Drawn from the bed of heat itself: to be coldAnd find warmth, a wall blank in the early morningThe sprig of moonrise…

Good Friday It’s almost Easter herein Elsewhere and the machinesare doing all the work: washing, sweeping,   heating still while I haunt my homeuseless as a second thought.I will never reach the end   of this novel. I will fail to emptythe diaper pail. I will eat lunch standingover the sink and it will taste like   nothing at all. Even the excursionsare broken. The highway turnsand clovers over and under   and over. At the filling stationwhile the car fills itselfI will pass once more   on the opportunity to wipethe beetles from my windshieldin favor of staring south   and if a stranger were to ask me just…