OCCUPANT
The sad mailbox of my extreme youth, what did it ever deliver? The only...

A CRITIC
Pick up your socks. Clean the house once in a while. Go to the dentist. ...

HISTORIAN
Piles and piles of books, boxes of documents, photographs, bones, shreds of clothes...

YOU WHO KNOW
I was just enough bigger that I could wrestle you into the clean straw of the mow...

GRIFFY LAKE
I spread my smooth water like a lap and caught the trees' faces where they fell...

NINE SIGNATURES

In your head, slender curlicues of blood
     sign for memory

Your heart lays itself out for a census of
     one or two or

The signature on your palm is effortless
     and when you take my hand we press
     our names together

One leg signs for the other and the other
     signs for the first

The signature of the medium of flight,
     vision and burning is registered in your
     lungs

The signature of heaven is all orbits and
     explosive dots, it fits in the corner of
     your eye

Your name might be a mistake, but bad 
     handwriting can cover that  

There is a man of gold whose signature is
     a luxury, whose first name alone clears
     all obstacles

I know a woman who signs with her hair