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Once, when I threw a stone at Death’s broad back,

He whirled, snatching it from the astonished air,

Weighed it a moment, then flipped it back to me

Smiling, quite gently – as if we were friends

Since then whenever Death and I meet

He acknowledges me with a half-salute,

Or bow or the flicker of a supple hand

PICTURE

While he can still recall her face

He draws it on a piece of brown paper

With red chalk and black and a bit of white

Catching the faint shine her skin showed

When she'd been working. From the page

She smiles at him reassuringly.

Even dead, she’ll interrupt her work

Because he asks it of her.

NOT WRITTEN

There was to be, my notes tell me, a poem

About the trumpeter Columbus brought with him

To play a fanfare for the Chinese Emperor.

In China, three ghosts and a raven

Were waiting to whirl him and his horn

To a different court entirely. I believe

The God of Calligraphy had agreed

To make an appearance halfway through.

Alas, the trumpeter or I missed our time

And the poem sailed off without him.

ANSWERS

A reader from Ohio writes
"What sort of zoning laws require
That garrets have bath houses
Built next door to them? Also,
Is one of the ghosts named Trevor?
If so, I think I met him once
Floating down the Rio Atabapo."
Dear reader, the zoning laws
Are not quite so simple. The area
Is what is called a "mixed used district;"
The uses it allows are garrets,
Gazebos, bath houses, bird baths,
And giant naked statues of Napoleon.
(It happens I am quite well acquainted
With a giant naked statue of Napoleon
But he lives in Apsley House, in London.)
The birds in my poems are dayworkers
Who mostly choose to bathe at home.
Thus, most of the district is simply garrets --
Whole buildings composed only of garrets.
(We're offering very attractive terms
If you're a starving artist looking
For a basement garret.) The main bathhouse;
It moves about, or did until the Princess Sophia
Took it over.  I’m not on the Zoning Board;
Most of its members are cats. I do not intrude
Upon the business of cats.

                                                    None of the ghosts
Is named Trevor or anything remotely like Trevor.

P.I.R.

The stone over her grave lists her virtues
Saying she was loved and loving but
It's carved in reverse so that a mirror
Is needed to read it. Also, her birth
Takes place 28 years after her death.
Such things happen to some folk.

SOPHIE

Somewhere -- -a bar? A lecture? -- my muse met

George's daughter, the blind Princess Sophie,

Who spent many of her last dark years
Tearing up books under the impression that torn paper
Comforted the sick. Who knows how many pillows
She sent to puzzled ill people? It was a slow season;
I had no work for her. Still, she seemed a quiet soul
And blind! And princess! So I let her live
In an imaginary garret room. Unfortunately, zoning laws
Required I construct a bath house next door
(If you have bath house ghosts, sooner or later
There must be a bath house for them to haunt)
The garret bored her; she frequented the bath house
Where she mastered Minnesota Whist. I don't see
How a blind woman can win so often, nor what
She means to do with her indentured ghosts.

FROM NOW

4:05; November's last day
Sky grey up high shading to white
At the horizon. A single leaf stirs
In a breeze only it feels. Until now
The universe has gone as planned
But this moment, this leaf,
This breeze from a direction
Never previously suspected
Is as far as the planning goes.
Think carefully; listen to spiders;
Practice looking through walls.