Two songs from "Approaching Seventy"

Now go dance

with the skeletons

feed them word meat be their slave

that worm there is hungry

that rubied iridescent beetle that fly

making a path through some sour dirt

you hairy impertinent bag of water

what do you know

about hunger

* * *

You hairy impertinent bag of water

says the fly buzzing on my windowsill late in the fall

about to die

tumbling over in its agony

leave me alone for God's sake

leave me my pitiful dignity

The day is azure and breezy there outside

yet I cannot look away from the anguished

fly on the sooty windowsill