Why do I hold my clean hands
under hot water until they sting?

My tongue aches from rehearsals.
Silver chutes shoot my open eyes.

Stiff slanting wings lift our bodies
resting above clouds — breathing, dreaming.

Trust loosens our shoes, unpegs belts
cinched around our expanding profit motives.

Trust will settle us down to Earth.
Bright shields of elastic goose flesh.

Wet maps wrinkle in my hot palms.
I would dovetail all my hinges!

Lets love our flaws above each wave.
Counting freckles until we land alive.

An adult fox rockets out from the usual darkness
between our house and the dark house next door!
We wait breathlessly in our dark parked car.

The fox glides with its nose aimed low
before the steady flow of a long tail that
seems to propel its dreamlike streamlined body!

It accelerates like it’s late for an important launch,
or lunch date with that worried White Rabbit who led
fallen Alice through the weird wildness of Wonderland.

The fox doesn’t seem to see or smell us watching
from our quietly ticking car, or it can’t care
as it masters its mysterious midnight mission —

crossing our yard and silent street without
even checking for giant speeding roaring
things with round dangerous feet.

After reaching the other side of the road
this fiercely focused predator prefers
the paved sidewalk and continues on

quickly uphill toward the closed business district
of our outfoxed town. Wake up neighbors!
Something wild is running around!

for Frank O’Hara (1926 – 1966)

All his funny witty wordy jazz
stopped that morning with the sun
burning in his eyes so he didn’t realize
the danger from a crazy dune buggy yes
it was July 24, 1966 and no one knows
now who drove too fast or what careless
drunk hit him because maybe his nose
was in a book of poems by Verlaine
or some Ghana poets or the art News
puffing a Gauloise or a Picayune
thinking about de Kooning or Kline
or Pollock throwing sand in the blaze
of sun as there roared close fate’s
dune buggy forever framing Frank’s
own “eternally fixed afternoons.”

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