You'll show that toad-eater who wrote Night Thoughts

    what's happened in two centuries or so.

    You'll make your yard the spirit's doorway

    to metamorphs and comet-lit inventions.

    Go ahead， walk the cathedral-volumned night.

    Let Perseids stripe your eyes.

    I read the other day

    that giant black snowballs from outer space

    created our oceans.

    Center me， physics， keep me

    from brooding too long on my fear，

    on the pickup truck that rammed the school bus，

    on the strange sea pastures of the Persian Gulf，

    on love and its string of losses.

    Now everything's strings， they say， cosmic strings

    that pull the galaxies toward the Great Attractor

    holding all matter together.

    Microcosm， meet macrocosm.

    Solace us with your kinship， make

    one little yard an everywhere.

    I think of Calvino's

    dark， humorous mind，

    another squirrel in the treetops——

    how he made truth and wit

    from troubling loops of knowledge.

    And Miroslav Holub，

    who lived alone in this house one spring

    and pondered this yard as I do.

    The appetite for fact

    helped him survive， walk around

    and laugh to himself， inside

    this century's bluntest terrors——

    the one that Hitler made，

    the one that Stalin added.

    A string may link me to them here，

    and run

    right through the blackened school bus，

    the rubble of Beirut，

    down to the toxic wastes， on up and out

    to the ice ball punching our atmosphere——

    Like Theseus in his labyrinth，

    I stand here holding

    my little end of string.

    I caught and cupped a firefly just now

    like an old miser blowing on his palms

    to keep some warmth in.

    I'd like that glow to be

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