We are all full of discourses that we only half understand and half mean.

The ghosts swarm. They speak as one person. Each has left something undone.

I know you by your willingness.

But here I hold your dream in my poem.

Poetry wants to make things mean more than they mean, says someone, as if we knew how much things meant, and in what unit of measure.

Like all my poems, 'Negotiations' has several sources. It deals with aging lovers and the often silent deals they make. Thinking about bargains made me think of The Little Mermaid and that made me remember something I had just read about the incredibly complex process by which tadpoles (actual little mermaids) are somehow able to reabsorb their tails and fashion their future frog legs.

The crowd is made of little gods, and there is still no heaven.