First Things At The Last Minute 

The white water rush of some warbler’s song.

Last night, a few strewings of ransacked moonlight

On the sheets.  You don’t know what slumped forward

In the nineteen-forties taxi or why they blamed you

Or what the altered landscape, willowy, riparian,

Had to do with the reasons why everyone

Should be giving things away, quickly,

Except for spendthrift sorrow that can’t bear

Needing to be forgiven and look for something

To forgive.  The motion of washing machines

Is called agitation.  Object constancy is a term

Devised to indicate what a child requires

From days.  Clean sheets are an example

Of something that, under many circumstances,

A person can control.  The patterns moonlight makes

Are chancier, and dreams, well, dreams

Will have their way with you, their way

With you, will have their way. 

From TIME AND MATERIALS (Ecco Press, 2007)