There are times in a day when the voice wants to change: explore all the possibilities involved with sound, break itself into soreness, roughen up the beautiful strings just to hear difference, green as a pearl in the seaweed, that same wave as light brings when obscured. Or the voice wants to wander away, take a trip into the deeper place of the loud, raucous, dangerous- ly excessive and unfeeling self - a distorted trumpet blat on the walls of the cave. This is when insanity beckons, not from loss but an abundance of faith, the greed of the moment, fruit, cheese, bread in one's teeth, wine lapped up on the tongue - the amazed effect it creates all important, the new stone to worship when taste, scent, touch, the running juice on the lips are all one. These are the times it must be appeased with less, and that is the trick, isn't it? Parceling out the tenderest pleasures without speech, without throwing them off to the wind where they might sail into harm. They must be kept, a woman in bed, pregnant with child.

While waiting for a single stone to be placed 1. Not seizure, motion - the butterfly's flit of wings in the breeze, without specific direction, with only its flight as the key. 2. Shadows lie in wait for me. Even the dark won't dispute the reach they make with their limbs. The mystery is in temptation. Friends speaking behind your back, knives out, quick stabs, then a lapse into compassion. A flower that opens then shuts, a prison of petals beautifully rough in embrace. 3. Avoidance is absence mollified, stifled, the empty resistance of the hand sweeping past and finding no match for its strength no antagonist. Covered up and forgotten in the wake of this movement she lurks behind in the stillness. Come play! she begs. 4. Yes, he cried. I saw the tears. She doesn't believe because the words were not hers: spoken to the whirlwind with her voice of open sores. How to explain the sadness of men to this girl child of mine? That not all speech can be heard? That even male eyes can sing about loss, have regrets no voice knows? We have our prayers, her and I, and a certain comfort that is, but what does he have within this body enclosed? Only my skin against his, shoulders abreast, the touch of our arms fingers, hands - the texture of this. 5. My tasks no longer put off, I celebrate under sun, under clouds, the sweat which cools down my skin, the high ceilings of stores I walk in, the filtered glow of trac lights, all the stuff on display when I look about. The pleasure I see of a young man at work, selling to me what I want, is my gift, and I get back his self-satisfaction. His competent face the sure sign that life wants to find grace, forget grief. Payment's on credit. I don't have the cash. 6. My sister says I've known worse and I don't argue the point. But it's not the blow of the hammer when what shatters is glass.