From ‘The Human Abstract’, by Elizabeth Willis

This love is a deer crying in a gentleman

How small is the thought

of the apparent picture

a cabinet with wrong and wonder

(the sweet string) I had known it

in a different book in a smaller triumph

A Maiden

When I found your face on a pillow of leaves

you had already erased it. A nest so heavy

can stay in the heavens only by reversal.

By this law the knees are laced with abandon.

I said to the young man.

If watching is the manufacturer, and I lose you

what angel takes the place of a dowry

or distance in this leaf action?

These are from “The Human Abstract” by Elizabeth Willis. (Penguin: $12.95; 83 pp.) 1995 Reprinted by permission.