beginning with a line by Michel Deguy

When the wind sacks the village
– contour of clown and sagebrush

There's numbering, still. We have not learned
to form a convoy of singing deportees

Trees bent in reprieve as you asked
should one prefer to cross the bridge

Or preserve an abyss. Names blurring
slippery as wet stamps. Glad you came really

Despite contrary signs, shelf-moon, shingle
gerunds guiding a sense-organ toward the danger's bed

Bid-protected trees lost in the wood-smoke
abandoned to surgeons

.