(Newly Engaged, 1997)
We peal and snort through Highland Park,
send a few ground hogs under the lilacs,
gray squirrel into mountain laurel,
heron to perch on Frederick Douglass
whose face, through blue feathers,
lets me know that this laughter’s inculpable,
clean, corrective—
this dreaming that’s above good sense
like a natural arboretum, in whose sunken garden
freedom-fighters wear their hair long,
or a fishplate cross-tying two sleepers,
railroad conceived of a star.