San Sepolcro

 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.

Form: Free verse

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