Painted Bird

Gray sky at a gray dawn. Hint of sun through screen door to the east, narrow strip of yard, dark brown fence, white vine blossoms trailing over from the other side. A fig tree, too, but later in the year, branches heavy... Full of starlings, their squawk and chatter--appearing suddenly, ready for lunch. Thinking of Su Tung-Po, alone on the river at night, everything still, he considers the spider, the lonely mud worm... Man's fate, Leonard's as well, also alone...

Eternity and a Day

Bruno Ganz, on a quayside, somewhere in Europe. Photo in the NY Times, a decade back. Saved, the figure in the long coat, alone, walking with his dog...one ship, somewhere in the distance. Transposed here, more the sound of foghorns out on the bay, the Golden Gate, hidden, in the mist... Walking along the docks, that would have been 1955--a working port, freighters and longshoremen, cargo nets, cranes...the sailors' joints tucked away under the Bay Bridge, more by reputation... Staying somewhere downtown, awake at dawn, first cable car to Fisherman's Wharf... Crab pots, Monterey hulls, the life of the sea...

(for Nathan Kernan)

Zwanenburgwal

White swan on gray-green waters. The Zwanenburgwal, Amsterdam--old city, built on land reclaimed from the sea. Down in a basement, you lift a wooden trap door, and there, just a few feet below, the waters again, dark and disconcerting, and very very close. But then you become accustomed to the idea...the dam, the wall, the river itself...

Where these names come from...where they carry us...