May 1998

Letter to Galileo

green tendril to black vine
            the hand writes
as if to breathe
          ripe grape
            to a Tuscan hill

October’s selvage   round
                                    & sonorous
            a lamplit
            weave of rock
the moon   threads blue
            to her scored arias
                        l’ora l’uva l’ucello
    of hot Italian hills beyond
                                    a grove of olive
            the olive is about time

            its impounded
            silver moon
                        & the “crime”
                                    of Galileo still quick
& gree on the hills

                                                —O
                                                     the swill
                                    of history—

                        a poor old man
muttering into his beard
            at the Inquisition      . . . E pur si muove
                                                            (nevertheless it does move)

Dear Galileo Galilei,

                        It’s October 8, 1995. I’m staying
on the hill of Archetri     a few doors up from the house
  where you measured your fires     (imagine
whole months spent waiting for a star’s intelligence
            to cross your lens)    the old place
is for sale again    a fixer upper
            w? blue door & tower room    that may have been your jail
when blind          were the black cypress
            already nailed to the sky?
am writing to say
you were right about some things
                                                            the stars wander/the earth moves
full moon last night
this morning bright
                                                a green lizard
                                    on a terracotta urn

we’re still caught
between two fires.

My Dyslexia

Sorrow little
sparrow

when I was
a child

you were
that bird.