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20
Unlikely place for both fl ower and you
To choose (all but absurd
For you to love).
Still, there you both are, each in your way
(By refl ex) hopeful, too.
The least breeze shakes your prize,
In its brief stay,
As naturally
As fatigue and more shake you
At sixty-two....
3. the lizards of lizard flat
Just ahead of us they run, stop, run, stop, their transit
Building a structure light and elegant,
Jointed with pauses,
Extending itself in segments (with time out
For slewing sidewise to look back at the humans)
Like shooting bamboo.
a pull-out by the sespe
For years this stream ran clear.
I'd fi sh it alone, all day.
Then came the long drought. Now
we stand in the familiar
dirt pull-out, drinking coff ee.
When the off -and-on breeze hits,
two young cottonwoods begin stirring
on the near bank, half their branches
still green, the others yellow.
We watch their all-over shivery
hard twinkling leaves
throwing off fl akes and