It’s so quiet tonight
      I can hear the angels breathing
      Our hands are transparent
      As veined as autumn leaves.
      I rest in their arms
      And sense the mist rising.
                                              ‘In the Night’, Carolyn Kizer

Let there be light! On my desk, halogen
So my eye-and-a half has light to read
Writers my age. Time is drowning our men
And women poets. Irish Galway is dead.

No light for Merwin who moves in blind dream,
Bly is dementia mad. Cancer ripped away
James Wright, the wild kid on the block. I seem
a lingering ghost when even Strand’s gone. ‘Hey

Mark’, ‘Hey Jude, don’t let us down.’ Shove a cork
In time for flooding Ruth Stone’s snowfields. What?
Are you not here, Carolyn? In New York,
After midnight in this Dutch town we put

The moon to sleep and we stroll, stroll, and float
A Persian rug woven by nightingales
And leopards over brownstones to a boat
On Swan Pond by the Zoo before a pale

Dawn wakes brownstones and temples housing Job.
Is Kizer gone? I walk up hills and see
Blind violet stars staring down on our globe.
Carolyn giggles from eternity.