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you might walk to what you see
anywhere here, observe it,
and make your way back during
the morning hours, through the trees.
Under the ordinary
bright gentle light of the place
I look in across a fence
at a bed of wild grasses
stippled with alyssum, with
a few native poppies -- slight,
chill orange, snipped out fi nely.
A poppy is struggling
and the others barely shake;
one of its petals comes loose,
wavering down a kind of
creek of air. Son, you could choose
at such times to be happy,
yet free of your happiness,
knowing that its root is hap --
I'd have had you arriving
so as not to be bemused
in it; say, splashing ashore
as one of a colony
of Greeks fresh from disaster
who glance about expertly.
the open world
I drive up on the headland
to the campus, to fi nish
some last chores -- down through the gaps
between the big buildings a