faded prayer flags over the porch
stir in faint new jersey breeze
steady trill of crickets in the sycamores and rhododendra
over variorum roar of traffic shifting axes with the changing light
red green red green red green
(green really a variant of blue, an aid they say to the color blind)
the whishhhhh of tires on asphalt
sometimes the deeper throated rumble of motorcycle or big bone rattling of truck
or surprisingly metallic clatter of jet overhead to newark from newark
(hope they make it)

brown leaf falls from sycamore lands on azalea
the memorized white pink red blossoms gone gone
totally gone
gone where?
gone where the snow went when it melted
where my lap goes when i stand
where the memory goes when it goes
where the jet roar fades and goes from me, and i from it

where the bright blue yellow red green of the prayer flags went
out on the breeze that stirs various things in turn
not multiple separable breezes but
one churning no color sea we paddle and bob in
swim and drift in
through which the yip of neighbor dog, chuckle of alarmed squirrel, pots and pans percussion of car stereo at red light
swim toward me and toward all and are gone

gone where the colors go
prayer flags faded to unvarying gray brown traffic smudge
yet in early afternoon sun surprisingly translucent
like old bones bleached of opacity, purged of weight
and inscribed in whisper thin black lines
ghosts of prayers faint ghosts of buddhas
faint fainter fainting into the new jersey breeze

I been working this dentist chair for three thousand years
three thousand plus some.
Shakespeare's teeth, they were like rubies,
rubies and razor blades,
tricky to work on.
Freakin' Socrates was a mess,
never flossed,
whole mouth soft like a swamp, and smelled like one.
I liked Annie Oakley.
She never used Novocain, didn't care, didn't flinch.
I spent seventeen years on the Russian army
while they stalked Napoleon, working in shifts,
between the field and my chair,
put braces on the bunch of 'em,
bunch of preening sissies, posing with their new smiles and bayonets.

Looking down into mouths
the first five, six hundred years were boring
but then it started feeling, I don't know,
like some kind of tunnel, with something at the other end.
The one that did it, never could pronounce his name,
old bent-over street sweeper from Benares, used a broom with no handle,
had two healthy teeth left, I did a good job,
saved those suckers so he could chew his rice and dahl,
and plinked out the rotten ones into a brass cuspidor.
Left a lot of space.

He didn't thank me, didn't complain,
but opened good and wide, wide,
and Jesus, I don't know, all that space,
like the moon shining on the Ganges
and the darkness behind it
and the darkness behind it.

I think I need ballast.
I'm floating away.
Grounded objects are shrinking
at an alarming rate.
Brontosaurs become puppies,
oceans slosh in my teacup,
I step over gravel
that was mountains, moons.
The Peloponnesian Wars
rage in my Cheerios,
the kings and queens of England
doze, tucked in my mailbox.

I think I need ballast.
Can you lend me some?
Melted-down doorknobs,
a truckload of bowling balls,
a boatload of newsprint,
Walter Cronkite's mustache
to add gravitas to my levity.
I'm trying to be serious
but I'm seriously zooming -

as Earth shrinks to donut, donut to hole,
the whole big shebang deflates, poofs, caves in,
as I space out to outer space,
out of sight,
out of mind,
outta here.