Can’t you see I’ve done what you do? I’ve used 
the ampersand, though it looks like a statue, 
and the golden words—susurrus, laconic, 
and pluvial—too? Icarus has fallen 
in my bedroom, diving into the wreck!

I see you there, through the diamond spaces 
of the fence, swirling wines I don’t know, 
thanking each other for the blurbs. You laugh, 
drunk and in wonderment at the waltzing 
aspens, shoes almost touching. Guests shoulder 

the welcome semicircle of your verse, 
following you now to the conference hall 
before dinner and tonight’s reading, eyes 
on the ugly one published everywhere 
that matters, but without a book. He looks 

so much like Beethoven I’m convinced
his grimacing work is good, better than 
mine will ever be. He will teach maybe
three classes at a small school in Kansas
though no one can say what he really means. 

My shoulder bag fails and there they go, free
to decompose in the Rockies. Or not:
maybe a poem, this poem, will lift above
the aspens. Maybe there will be a goat. 
He will chew on it. He will spit it out.

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