EMBERS. A FEW trampled grasses. Having left Orange County a ruin, my father and I must flee.

Have I never seen the jungle, truly, the jungle ? Will we reach it ? There might be a sea between us. There might be a quiet. Do not try to follow.

NA TO SA PI (Sun the Elder, Blackfoot)

“The final two syllables of the name mean grey or white hair of an old man. But they also aesthetically imply ‘to see’, as in to gain insight.” His bright rifle at his cheek nearly he brought down the sun he blinked it away he could see inside precisely what medicine I need.

OUT OF travel I built a nest. The road passing in strands and I took those strands. Wove a ring, curled in it. I carried one egg, still carry it. The photograph in the egg is albumen wet, becoming less formed, a dark lump — do not think of the fertilized egg that cracked in the sink shit still stuck to the shell what puddled surprise laid out on the stainless steel how quickly you turned on the tap to wash it away — think of this, the egg behind the ribs.

GRAY through the trees through the window makes a nest for recollection. Is beatitude a memory ? A burrito ? Heavensent their expressions and now where are they ? You have this face. Remember.

LONELY SHOOTER, do you see ?

WHAT ARE WE if not mountains? Mount Meru, Regal Mountain, Fireweed Mountain, I had thought by looking you could make them again inside. A different inside from what you looked at before. If you were looking at a city, that would be your inside city. If you were looking at a face, that would be your inside face, projected on the screen at the front of the chest. How Hanuman shows his devotion, tears his chest open, shows Ram and Sita. On that screen, flickering between a mountain and a face. A mountain and a face and a brave indolence sallying at the corners of the image which we must ward off because a chest besieged, just the smoke from such a siege, would leave all the organs sleeping.

OUT OF the idea of constriction, three suggestive requests in order of urgency set to quiet (can you feel the rhythm burnin’, burnin’) rock in a tight blue interior, hemmed in by mist, and perched over us, Jesus in a peely pink frame, a few dried grasses in offering.

VERY MUCH like a vessel in which you have two choices. Spread a length of baling wire and, hands rust-striped, sew your seat back up. Or follow the instructions. Then, of a sudden, everything turns into instruction. Do you put the seat cushion to your chest and clasp forearms through the elastic straps provided? And if the plastic bag does not inflate, is the oxygen still sweet smelling? Have I left my head between my knees? Langurs (languorous) hang from the rhododendron trees, their fixed black lips bulging with instruction. At the falls, pedalboats in the concrete lake (rebar showing, rebar always showing, in case we need to add a second story) turn only circles. And the tiny tinny music, out the tired speakers, rings off the concrete; you recognize the words but the grammar gyres up with the spray from the falls, lit by the sun, and falls apart.

ONCE a loved one requested face, suggesting our sojourn was faceless. We face many things, we argue. Here, facing the truth, and then, in a boat, in a park outside Bharatpur, facing birds.

WE miss cake for we loves cake dearly. Safely, cake go safely.

FIFTY years later, as the president visited so are we to visit.

The explosion is for my father’s birthday. The dollar is for my love. We have not pictured the kerchief my father tied around the president because a boyscout can do that to another boyscout. The kerchief is for covering where the neck is bare. We have not pictured the near ewe.

CAN you imagine your friend in a squall, Boss bursting from the tape player, lines waving limp wet and the sails rattling? The lake is growing big as Idaho. The deck pours into your deck shoes. How her dress waves. Cry into your deck shoes.

Or your friend one unseasonal night, an evening lolled on the couch (bad, slow winds threatening; a warm night in winter is sometimes not welcome), and his sudden jumping up, throwing off his morass, warm beer upset in the process? The screen door slams. Outside, your face in the shadow a streetlight pulls from the neighbor’s hedge, your face over the handlebars of the neighbor’s motorcycle. Precarious because you have not kicked the kickstand. A song in the invisible helmet. Also, tears.

A quick sunset over your friend who found his graduation gown in the garage, roaming a town full of losers, picking his way to the dirty river? Up to your knees, the gown tugging against the current.

We got one last chance to make it real.

THE STORY IN WHICH : A pale phlebotomist picks his way down a gray alley, and a squirrel half run over once twitches his tail more like a keychain now, and would such a keychain be lucky? He is young and he sucks blood. He is young and wishes he could love, as he walks down the street, everything. A sparrow might alight on his open palm, peck a crumb of cookie from lunch. Instead of sparrows : rain. Instead of love : a warm feeling, where he remembered his scarf this morning because winter is coming and it should be colder. A scarf makes a big difference.

For one thing, his boyhood was by and large scarfless. The weather would not permit it. This new place, its scarved denizens parading around the brick downtown, calls out for them. Don’t forget yours. Maybe a sign of musical taste or time spent in another country or maturity or the semblance of maturity. The man in the public library, polo-shirt and suitcoat, white hair wild, who stood up to the payphone then sat back down, up again, back to his seat, he was with-scarf. Even as he accosted the nurse’s son on his way to the children’s reading corner—“We pay a different dividend, don’t we son, you and I?”—even as he gestured, his scarf tails flapped significantly out of his lapels. The nurse smiled, grabbed his son’s little hand tighter, their hands set off by the bright leaves through the window. A scarf would not have looked good with his scrubs, he made a good choice that afternoon. But he probably owned one anyway.

The phlebotomist wonders if there are more squirrels by the public library or if it only seems so. The leaves in the library parking lot are always restless, a trailing silhouette always bounces across the bare limbs reaching for the raingutters, and does squirrel-love count, because that is easy to muster on account of the fur on their faces, the depthless eyeballs shining through. When it is winter, actually, the river through town will be that color, until it fully freezes. Then it will look more like the skin of clients who sell too much blood, tired college students, barely emerged from their hooded sweatshirts. But it is impossible to give every drop, impossible to collect it. He pierces a lot of people everyday and it isn’t surprise he feels staring at the small stain, tiny mistake, darkening his shoe.

(BOM) — First, named for a church on the west side of the railroad station where the high school is now. Landing fishes and then airplanes. Then the dust under which all the places were re-remembered : Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji International.

Of Kshatriya Kulavantas Sinhasanadheeshwar Chhatrapati Shivaji Rhaje Bhosle Maharaj it was said : “In his courage and rapidity he does not ill resemble that great king of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus.” He was French, who said this, before a church was there, before a train.

Kind of a big deal, right? That we both have tickets, to leave off Detroit on separate planes, expecting to reconvene twenty hours later, the other side of the world, in the dark outside the airport. We will have to pass the hall wherein the travelers sleep on vinyl loungers and it will not be pretty. This is what happens to people when they don’t belong anywhere for several hours. It is always dark when I make it outside, taxis slinking in and out of the lamps, moths clouding the light. The receiving Ambassador sedans come with more bodies than have arrived on the flight. And I am small and perched on a lap, a suitcase, on a suitcase on a lap. You promise you’ll meet me?

Wooly faced and thinking, camping . To Big Hole ! Dear, would you ? Would I ?