AT THE SPIDER House coffee shop, the music's loud but the late sun comes on with perfection. It makes a rare day of tranquil leaf unfolding spring radiance. The pecan tree over us opens with bright green young buds. K drinks water and plays on flagstones by a gargoyle statuette. Students come to study. There's coffee and beer. I don't know anyone here. We're strangers, buffered by busy lives. Now grackles cry from a pecan. Reading Durrell on Provence—there aren't any olive trees here like in southern France, but white limestone exposures and these low, scrubby oaks make me think of an old world vista. Now wind ruffles chinaberries. Students download images to their laptops.
But if you see
through these
greeny topsides
to a cold core—
Give grace, dear dead
and living gods
for to spoil
sunken cadavers
with this fleshy abundance—
spectacular!