In this blue light

     I can take you there,

snow having made me

     a world of bone

seen through to.  This

     is my house,



my section of Etruscan

     wall, my neighbor's

lemontrees, and, just below

     the lower church,

the airplane factory.

     A rooster



crows all day from mist

     outside the walls.

There's milk on the air,

     ice on the oily

lemonskins.  How clean

     the mind is,



holy grave.  It is this girl

     by Piero

della Francesca, unbuttoning

     her blue dress,

her mantle of weather,

     to go into



labor.  Come, we can go in.

     It is before

the birth of god.  No one

     has risen yet

to the museums, to the assembly

     line--bodies



and wings--to the open air

     market.  This is

what the living do: go in.

     It's a long way.

And the dress keeps opening

     from eternity



to privacy, quickening.

     Inside, at the heart,

is tragedy, the present moment

     forever stillborn,

but going in, each breath

     is a button



coming undone, something terribly

     nimble-fingered

finding all of the stops.