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Paradise

I.   The garden of Eden. Also called earthly p., to distinguish it from the heavenly p.                                                      First She is seventeen, he twenty-one. She is a green girl, Ophelic but believing Herself a witch-queen, while he plays Edmund, Bastard and natural. Sitting on the cliff’s edge, her Back to the village where floats down…

Chrysalis

Corpses push up through thawing permafrost, as I scrape salmon skin off a pan at the sink; on the porch, motes in slanting yellow light undulate in air. Is Venus at dusk as luminous as Venus at dawn? Yesterday I was about to seal a borax capsule angled up from the bottom of a decaying…

Omens

Syringes, ampoules, feathers, finger foods, driftwood, A purple sheen on the water, obscene eddies, mud on the banks     and pine nests. This morning I saw another omen: there’s always something,     usually just one thing, An egret or an ibis. But it’s the things in conjunction that make meaning. Five days ago there was…

The Last Time I Saw You

I think the last time I saw you may have been that time near the church. I still like that church despite this, though the church is also other things to me. In fact, more and more I wish I remembered those other things that are called permanent, inviolable, impregnable to assault or trespass, secure…

Sisterhood

For what it’s worth, once I left the convent, but I never left the Church. It’s true, I left Ireland in a hurry, too. You could say I broke the habit, or to quote my da’ “I pulled a rabbit out o’ my arse” and realized I put the cart before the horse and wasn’t…

Bartram’s Garden

I. What appears untidy and lacking in design is in fact intentional: quiet milkweed beside the conflagration of red fireweed; the brackish Schuylkill feeding stately oaks. John knew the author lays his borders, then steps back. General Washington, strolling the overgrown river trail, pursed his lips; what sort of father lets his seed run wild,…

The Gold Lunch

As the lights go up, a man standing on a small platform facing stage right (an imaginary audience there) waves one more time at those people and turns and steps down toward us. He is dressed in an impeccably casual way: slacks and a sport coat, tie optional. Around his neck on a ribbon is…