first it’s snow
in the forecast
to terrorize the brand new buds

that arrived
on tree branches overnight

then it’s a thunderstorm
then occasional rain
then this cloudy and cool

the last Saturday in April
not so cruel

the cyclist run over
by a produce truck
will survive

a luthier picks through
the city’s old bones

to make his next move
May will come to
in tune

margin

I don’t know if
the bees will
rise again.

What if
I give up
the pen—

dump all
I’ve captured
into a two-minute iMovie.

Photographers are thieves
like us. We steal
bodies to reframe

and remind us
of all we cannot know
like those bees

that can shake
pollen off
a flower’s anthers.

As a high rising terminal
climbs up the left margin,
a vocal fry slides down the right.

This is a monotone—
my mantra to the edge
where I wait

for the city and the sea
to bleed

into each other. My wings
beat so much faster
than either of us predicted.

This poem is a train,
this stanza
a station.

Express through
the next

into another
Good Friday
waiting for the bees.

This one’s not going to Rome.
We can open the window
against the night.

into the thinnest ether
what is this ether
will it help me sleep

all those night singers
swinging their tippers
pound their bodhráns

strange ones
made of dragon skin
let the goats roam free

leave the misplaced Ferris wheel
on the mall behind
at least I still have a stoop

even if the vestibule window
gets smashed in the middle
of the night the way I no longer can

there are always strangers on a train
that’s just how it is
in this stanza

a future one
will house Uncatena
the ferry and the island

here on a plane about to take off
for Ireland / some turbulence
some troubles ahead / please not again

delicious thoughts of death
she sleeps with one eye open
I see it with my own left / over eye

it’s an affliction
not addiction
this arriving everywhere early

listening to the National’s “Sorrow”
I don’t wanna get over you
I am doomed

to this single story
looking for the overstory
in an understory realm

I bought no wool
I drank no Guinness
attended no mass

I ate no lamb / gave no blood
the way this island
has given me mine

don’t leave Eavan on the plane
like some perfumed magazine
flipped through / barely read

yes / the swan-necked streetlamps
were on / Eavan / and I could have strolled
through St. Stephen’s Green

100 more times
as 100 shades of green
course through my veins

before New England
there was this Ireland

allergic to wool
just like my dad / his dad
worked in the mill

and it was that disturbed English poet
Charlotte Mew who said something about
the little damp room with the seaweed smell