ABIQUIU DAM

                   Double-rainbowed light and vanished rain

                   ally in arcs above the reservoir.

                   The wind's a passing car.

                   Some things I know I can't unlearn:

                   for God so loved the world.

                   The water and the western sky

                   are flame the sun let stray.

                   Love is known most when shown.

***

ORIGIN OF BELIEF

I unfurled my limbs as slowly as salt

exhales in a shallow bowl

and stretched out long

from toes to fingers. I ran

my fingertips across my lips,

and a wall of ice rose straight up

to the leisurely shifting stars,

the glinting sky, a vault

of blue dark suspended

over self-lit sheets of ice.

Water stretched before my raft -

a narrow path culminating

in no point. Only an architect

could dream geometry here.

I wasn't cold.

I breathed onto the ice,

blue and white and clear,

its fissures, bubbles, and veins.

I was twelve, come back or gone for good.

SIMULACRUM OF A CAT

                   His eyes are ringed with blue.

                   They shine in stone

                   from a body that can't reflect. Facing me,

                   he has a hunchbacked

                   symmetry. I couldn't be stiller

                   if I weren't alive. What lies

                   behind his inscrutable eyes?

                   Day and night, he looks

                   at me. If I could, I'd lift

                   his feet, and let them thud down. "Move,"

                   he seems to say. "You're not real

                   either, but must pretend to be."