One 1960 In the old joke, the marriage counselor tells the couple who never talks anymore to go to a jazz club because at a jazz club everyone talks during the bass solo. But of course, no one starts talking just because of a bass solo or any other solo for that matter. The quieter bass solo just reveals the people in the club who have been talking all along, the same ones you can hear on some well-known recordings. Bill Evans, for example, who is opening a new door into the piano while some guy chats up his date at one of the little tables in the back. I have listened to that album so many times I can anticipate the moment of his drunken laugh as if it were a strange note in the tune. And so, anonymous man, you have become part of my listening, your romance a romance lost in the past and a reminder somehow that each member of that trio has died since then and maybe so have you and, sadly, maybe she. Lucky Cat It''s a law as immutable as the ones governing bodies in motion and bodies at rest that a cat picked up will never stay in the place where you choose to set it down. I bet you''d be happy on the sofa or this hassock or this knitted throw pillow are a few examples of bets you are bound to lose.

The secret of winning, I have found, is to never bet against the cat but on the cat preferably with another human being who, unlike the cat, is likely to be carrying money. And I cannot think of a better time to thank our cat for her obedience to that law thus turning me into a consistent winner. She''s a pure black one, quite impossible to photograph and prone to disappearing into the night or even into the thin shadows of noon. Such an amorphous blob of blackness is she the only way to tell she is approaching is to notice the two little yellow circles of her eyes then only one circle when she is walking away with her tail raised high--something like the lantern signals of Paul Revere, American silversmith, galloping patriot. Only Child I never wished for a sibling, boy or girl. Center of the universe, I had the back of my parents'' car all to myself. I could look out one window then slide over to the other window without any quibbling over territorial rights, and whenever I played a game on the floor of my bedroom, it was always my turn. Not until my parents entered their 90s did I long for a sister, a nurse I named Mary, who worked in a hospital five minutes away from their house and who would drop everything, even a thermometer, whenever I called.

"Be there in a jiff" and "On my way!" were two of her favorite expressions, and mine. And now that the parents are dead, I wish I could meet Mary for coffee every now and then at that Italian place with the blue awning where we would sit and reminisce, even on rainy days. I would gaze into her green eyes and see my parents, my mother looking out of Mary''s right eye and my father staring out of her left, which would remind me of what an odd duck I was as a child, a little prince and a loner, who would break off from his gang of friends on a Saturday and find a hedge to hide behind. And I would tell Mary about all that, too, and never embarrass her by asking about her nonexistence, and maybe we would have another espresso and a pastry and I would always pay the bill and walk her home. The Night of the Fallen Limb It sounded like a chest of drawers being tipped over, but it turned out to be the more likely crashing down of a limb, and there it was crippled on the lawn in the morning after the storm had passed. One day you may notice a chip on a vase or an oddly shaped cloud or a car parked at the end of a shadowy lane, but what I noticed that summer day from a reading chair on the small front porch was a sparrow who appeared out of nowhere, as birds often do, then vanished into the leafy interior of the fallen limb as if it were still growing from the tree, budding and burgeoning like all the days before. Toward evening, two men arrived with a chainsaw and left behind only a strewing of sawdust and a scattering of torn leaves before driving off in their green truck. But earlier, I had heard chirping issuing from inside the severed appendage as if nothing had happened at all, as if that bird had forever to sing her little song.

And that reminded me of the story of St. Denis, the third-century Christian martyr, who reacted to his own decapitation by picking his head up from the ground, after it tumbled to a stop, of course, and using it to deliver to the townspeople what turned out to be his most memorable sermon. Greece The ruins were taking their time falling apart, stones that once held up other stones now scattered on top of one another as if many centuries had to pass before they harkened to the call of gravity. The few pillars still upright had nervous looks on their faces teetering there in the famous sunlight which descended on the grass and the disheveled stones. And that is precisely how the bathers appeared after we had changed at the cliff-side hotel and made our way down to the rocky beach-- pillars of flesh in bathing suits, two pillars tossing a colorful ball, one pillar lying with his arm around another, even a tiny pillar with a pail and shovel, all deaf to a voice as old as the surf itself. Is not poetry a megaphone held up to the whispering lips of death? I wrote, before capping my pen and charging into the waves with a shout. Basho in Ireland I am like the Japanese poet who longed to be in Kyoto even though he was already in Kyoto. I am not exactly like him because I am not Japanese and I have no idea what Kyoto is like.

But once, while walking around the Irish town of Ballyvaughan I caught myself longing to be in Ballyvaughan. The sensation of being homesick for a place that is not my home while being right in the middle of it was particularly strong when I passed the hotel bar then the fluorescent depth of a launderette, also when I stood at the crossroads with the road signs pointing in 3 directions and the enormous buses making the turn. It might have had something to do with the nearby limestone hills and the rain collecting on my collar, but then again I have longed to be with a number of people while the two of us were sitting in a room on an ordinary evening without a limestone hill in sight, thousands of miles from Kyoto and the simple wonders of Ballyvaughan, which reminds me of another Japanese poet who wrote how much he enjoyed not being able to see his favorite mountain because of all the fog. Not So Still Life The halves of the cleaved-open cantaloupe are rocking toward the violin lying on its back, and the ruby grapes appear to be moving a millimeter at a time in the direction of the inkwell and the furled map, former symbols of culture and sense. The china cup cannot be stopped from advancing subtly toward the silvery trout on a brown cedar plank for a reason no one can provide even if you made the mistake of asking. But that''s the way it goes when you commit to a painting after accepting an offering of mushrooms. I wish that the dull-grey pewter jug were not shifting toward the crystal bowl of lemons and that the sunflowers and the exposed oysters had agreed at some point to remain in their regular places. With the skull inching toward the pear, and the cluster of eggs beginning to wander, I had to reassure myself that my mother and father were still alive, I had a place to stay and a couple thousand dollars in a savings account.

It was just then that a realistic orange collided silently with a brass candlestick in some woman''s spacious apartment on top of one of the many hills of San Francisco. Cosmology I never put any stock in that image of the earth resting on the backs of four elephants who are standing on a giant sea turtle, who is in turn supported by an infinite regression of turtles disappearing into a bottomless forever. I mean who in their right mind would? But now that we are on the subject, my substitute picture would have the earth with its entire population of people and things resting on the head of Keith Richards, who is holding a Marlboro in one hand and a bottle of Jack Daniel''s in the other. As long as Keith keeps talking about the influence of the blues on the Rolling Stones, the earth will continue to spin merrily and revolve in a timely manner around the sun. But if he changes the subject or even pauses too long, it''s pretty much curtains for us all. Unless, of course, one person somehow survives being hurtled into the frigidity of outer space; then we would have a movie on our hands-- but wait, there wouldn''t be any hands to write the script or make the movie, and no theatres either, no buttered popcorn, no giant Pepsi. So we may as well see Keith standing on the shoulders of the other Rolling Stones, who are in turn standing on the shoulders of Muddy Waters, who, were it not for that endless stack of turtles, one on top of the other all the way down, would find himself standing on nothing at all. Dream Life Whenever I have a dream about Poetry, which is not very often considering how much I think about her, she appears as a seamstress who works in the window of a tailor''s shop in a.