Preceding the blood
shed, a collage slid off the wall
out of its shattered frame papers
unglued in the sultry day --
a pine limb snapped “a black-eyed pea”
from the bedroom window -- and more.

Constellations of oddness, coincidence
    or signs?
Once she wrote, I’m done with symbols.
Now, reading Lucretius, she’s not so sure:
    If you will add one small thing
    to another small thing, and
    frequently do this,
    soon you will find
    you have something
    very large.

A widow in New York believes
every monarch butterfly flitting in her path
carries a part of the spirit
of her dead husband.
    “Look! Here’s Louis!” she will say.
She can find his profile
cut in clouds, weep at the apparition
of a ladybug, delicately crossing
a plate of breakfast eggs.

Signs. Sweet lozenges
our tongues refuse to thin.

First, there were three camellia blossoms
in the blue glass vase, and then
there were two.
The one that fell,
    ripe fuschia, fell --
no apparent cause.