Books that survived the fire (because they were somewhere else)

• T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, often with me, this copy a gift from Sarai
• Scanning the Century poetry anthology, mostly unthumbed
• Rae Armantrout's Next Life, hardbound, awkward to hold for reading
• A copy of Fowler's Modern English Usage, from a previous life
• Zukofsy's A, which I still plan to get to
• Bill Berkson's Lush Life
• Mel Freilicher's The Unmaking of Americans: 7 Lives, which Dennis replaced for me
• Paul Dresman's The Silver Dazzle of the Sun, which was in my car's trunk
• Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, somewhat appropriate
• 5 copies of Small Rain
  

Damage

I keep thinking of old songs, “Season of the Witch,” and “Our House” with the verb tense changed to past. And I keep thinking of the thing people say, “At least no one died.” Not a consolation, really. “At least” doesn’t work in this situation. People die; houses aren’t supposed to; and when it’s your house, with your life in it, the thing you’ve created as the externalization of yourselves, there’s nothing to compare it to.

Leucadia

Let me be forgetful when I'm old
if not before, remember this, this only,
seagulls on the beach on Sunday, waves,
a child's blue wagon, bread for birds, beaks
in the stream, driftwood to sit on, a young woman
on a storm drain, staring out to see
if waves are breaking, seagulls flying, me