Memorial Day 2002

Absent not kissed how much you differ from
my earlier work. These anniversaries
glut: push: disappear where clouds ain’t floating.
They closed the coffee shop with us still in it.
Seven types of anxiety, clutter, fumble—
Later poems and much later poems and four
kinds of “not”                 Does Iowa look like Oregon or away?
You can’t rework that thing no more: it’s done.

Months later: the poems of Donne, no more, you.
Smiling we swallowed the packets           sugar?
Not kissed, unsolved, not absolved. Our sins make
fools of our circle, our love. October
leavetaking and a sonnet about Milton and bacon,
the breakfast food not the enlightenment man.