The Pole-Vaulter
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Perhaps nothing is not a surface: a red tea,
nectarines dozing in a green bowl,

the house ruffled in a single breath
with National Public Radio in its cells.

Say that space were the only variable. A road
snakes out of the Holland tunnel, and so on

through the Catskills’ miles-to-go-before-I-sleep
in fore-schemes of brick, begonia,

and later, that immense shale.
Back here, a carcass of whiting lies on the table.

Bones open it, like pins stuck in yellowed, antique crepe
in the slice of work/home/work. The past

is headless, like a fine stem. Of course,
the steadily awake are still

curling thick fingers around the bone-white cups
in a 24-hour coffee shop. By “bone,” I mean “imperfect.”

Because we’re stuck
between being here and not being here, although

the only thing beyond me is a point:
the lamp or the particular star

pinned to the felt in Lucy Osborne’s diorama
of the birth of Christ, circa 1968. And my half-Jewish heart

starved for the only child. His only duty—
to be loved. And look:

the viridian dusk may still be distinguished
over the fresh headstones of a village.