PATTERNS                                                                                                                                           

          appear sometimes in elegies, Larry Levis,

or in China that has been used a very long time

                                                                     to the point of breaking 

so brittle that you can see right through it

                                                                                                              in certain lights

only available in the pre-dawn hour

the lost hour

that you could not save into language

if you had every power

you imagined

when you were ten.

That elegy has a pattern in it

as does the network

of your mother's thoughts

as misremembered by your father

who has been trying for years

to preserve them

to fix them in a jar

(as you know, he will not succeed)