Paul Carroll

As a kid I tried to coax its coming
By sleeping beneath light sheets
Weeks before
The funeral of the summer locusts in the yard;
Then when Granny peeled down the crucifix of
flypaper that dangled from the ceiling of the
kitchen
Magic wasn't needed any longer

My mouth is snow slowly caking that stiff pigeon.
My mouth, the intricately moist machinery of a plant.
I have forgotten if I ever had a mouth.

I have two mouths.
One like warm rain;
or wind manipulating the worn limbs of an elm.

My mouth knows nothing of music.
Or of the oils of love.

To Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, James Dickey Were you guys lucky, too, to caddy, the light
on freshly-sprinkled fairway delicate and bright as eye of an

Our matchbox bedroom in the loft above your
sculpture factory
Turns magical at times
Behind its dark blue Druid door. Last night,
Inside you, sweetheart,
It felt as if I were coming from the soul itself.

And that Indian Summer Sunday afternoon a year
ago

Fall a scrimage of yellow leaves today
All over Lincoln Park
Like the mask of the Yellow Mule who travels between the next
world and Tibet inside its house of glass in the Field
Museum by the lake.
I am carrying the night.
I am carrying it as if it were a dark blue dish with stars
for the dinner of the Dalai Lama.