From the Book 
 ZEBRAS 
 The black and white stripes blur 
 due to their quickness and what is tattooed 
 into the pigment of their hides by racing 
 through the grainy sands of the equatorial sun. 
 Who wouldn't intuit streams of their movement, 
 even before they wade through the pools 
 of water in the shallows of their quenching? 
 As they shake off the dust from 
 their tomahawk manes, they are never any happier 
 when they gallop over the dry banks of the channel 
 after they have plashed through river mud. 
 In this lifetime, when you mail a card to me, 
 signed, Your Zebra, with stripes 
 bearing themselves on the front cover, 
 and the smudge of your kiss a carnelian stamp 
 pressed onto the back of the envelope, 
 it makes your stallion whinny. 
 Whatever scent that you infused within 
 allows me to imagine how I would inhale 
 the aroma of your skin, as we stop in the wind 
 of our own making, among antelope and gazelle. 
 Let us run apart from the herd. 
 Let our stripes blend together 
 across the grasslands of the Savanna. 
 May we bask felicitously among irascible hippos. 
 And, Oh, Darling, may we outrun the lions. 
 FINDING THE NAMES OF THE WILDFLOWERS GONE PAST 
 I remember how I would name the wildflowers for you 
 on our walks together, as if I had gathered bouquet 
 after bouquet of them in your honor, and laid them 
 in your freckled hands, to mirror their beauty and yours. 
 I enunciated their names, with my lips and tongue, 
 as I would have placed a kiss on your lips. However, 
 the roadsides are no longer lined with blue chicory, 
 alias ragged sailor; the slopes of the meadow no longer 
 spill white with Queen Anne's lace; the yellow buttons 
 of the leafless corollas of tansy punctuate a short declarative 
 sentence reminding us of the brevity of summer; 
 and now the fringe of the meadow is abundant with 
 the purple of autumn asters; a wildflower that is 
 not only a harbinger of frost, but the color of my sorrow.