Orison: February, Eugene, Oregon

for Al Young

Months of heavy rain and the back lawn                                                is an emerald pondwith islands of fig and apple trees and their dirt collarsdarkening under the pixilated gray of a computer-screen sky.

I've cinched my desires in a handful of thin books,wired the dwarf pines and maples in their pots on the deckand instructed them in Soul Train and break-dance posesto beguile my children and signify what's past.

Which is various: Motown and min'yo blaring together                                                on the PA of my high school gym,emanations of soul and shamisen from the living room stereoback when I was a child, Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come"rising like a willow tree by a smooth-flowing riverbanded with a long slick of stars streaking across its backin a wall-hanging of calligraphy and gaudy prints                                                over the Silvertone console.

I tell myself I've drifted too far now to go back,my karma the boat of a dry leaf caught in the swirls of that rivertaking me from ghetto to this immaculate garden                                                without stain or confusion,everything so calm and forgotten, the anguish I havelike the darting squirrel that emerges, a nervous                                                              and comic thing,unavailed of all the refulgence and splendor that surrounds himand would inspire a lapse from instinct and painif not for the immutable worry              that jags through his heart like a dance.