Every day, whether we realize it or not, we choose one of two stars to guide us, a star as ephemeral as our life, a star water can wash away. One star is made of packed sugar, the other of packed salt. Water melts both. If we choose the star of sugar we will follow…
The rooms where you entertained me are open to view And expensive now. But I’m drawn that way. The sea steps ashore up wide ascents of marble. Corinthian columns ruffle like bedclothes. Rough side of a towel, smooth side of silk. Your mare’s-tails unravel, and cloud the royal blue. A brown Raleigh three-speed. A wide-tired…
Duluth, Minnesota Read hawk’s story ink scrawls Across a paper sky the goodbye To time A woman Turning through wrinkled Leaves The Wood is in the Garden Is in the Wash The wind wraps all of us With winter Almost silence Then melts ice into spring Tongues loosen She snaps twigs Beneath…
Nights standing in a field or sleeping under the stars, I sense that one of those pebbles of light must be signaling me from deep space. I know this is no more than my own longing cast like fishing line into the depths of another kind of ocean, and that my aloneness is reflected in…
At sixteen, I worked after high school hours at a printing plant that manufactured legal pads: Yellow paper stacked seven feet high and leaning as I slipped cardboard between the pages, then brushed red glue up and down the stack. No gloves: fingertips required for the perfection of paper, smoothing the exact rectangle. Sluggish by…
I want to talk to ghosts. Where are they in this county. Over the red grass, under the rancher motels. To freefall through their gorgeous startling souls, released from time. My rearview mirror goes dark. I’m not afraid. Death is the instant of perfected memory. It seems just like the present tense, just like life,…
It was older than the red barns, older than the frog pond for the cattle, than the road up Clark Hill, and the live oak colonnade leading to the rich man's brasses. Older too than ox blood and the idea of honor, or the dream of dominance. It was a stillness of light pouring in,…
Not only what lasts, but what applies over time also. So maybe, for all my believing, not you, on either count. Any more than this hand where it falls, here, on your body; or than your body itself, however good sometimes at making—even now, in sleep—a point carry. Not this morning, either, that under the…
I am struggling with the first line. No, those words will not fit in my mouth. Language is neutral, the speaker is not. I can start fire with words, the pen is like a boxer’s gloves. I could dance this tropical dance with you, but my eyes are watching the lines carved underneath your eyes…
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