Slugs
asleep in the sink.
I could hardly
touch them
but I stayed up late in that kitchen
pulling a chair to, under my little
coffee pot, the blue flame.
Brown speckled pale yellow, size
of my thumb, they climbed up the sink
pipe at night, & before dawn were back
underground or perhaps stopped
in dark pipe elbow a gush
of boiling water. And then one morning
all over the fig, as if descended &
surfaced there to bask in late
autumn light, force in my mind
that burrows thru knots, beyond
extinction, messenger of what pulls
& stays our scared human hearts.
But weaker than us! My last
encounter—late in fall late at
night, stopped outside the gate
motorcycle beam still on
encompassed on the freezing
stone ledge a slug, motionless
I thought of you
in New York City,
your child dead, alone, wife
gone, the loft a dream, encompassed
in an alley late at night by
headbeam inviting as moon on
water, “of all those
who have lost what they can never
never hope to find again”
That’s why I sent you fare to come to
Kyoto! For I was there! In night steeped
high bushes, fences, little graveled
paths, a house, a wife, every morning’s
potential burst—I was the man
at sea . on water
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