CLOSING IN

Out on the hammock
In the sun reading
James Schuyler, his
Last Poems, the past
Overwhelms like air
From a sauna, the way
One bare leg smothers
Another with its mute
Flesh and I can’t help
Cheating backwards
Until I reach The Bluet
Which is really Eleni
Reading to us on
The still wet grass
A cigarette dangling
From her wide mouth
The river closing in
So very unlike this
Desert city, a coyote
Fence encircling the
Yard, hummingbirds
Drunk on sugar water
And a tiny breeze
Shuffling through
The tall Cottonwood
Trees, my eyebrows
Have gone blond once
Again under summer’s
Generous sun, beard
Red as blood oranges
Which wait inside
As does my family
All of them reading
And my years-gone
Grandmother’s clock
Which makes itself
Known every hour
Just in case we forget