Article

Central Park

Ignoring your poor prognosis, we set grief aside and at dusk behind the Met climbed slowly towards the obelisk where, resting a while, we might in time's pinched frame lavishly survey spring's blossoming. You were so eager for smell— nose in the first bloom at hand— like the hummingbird with his shrewd apparatus you drank…

In Weather

The Capitol dims and gives itself to snow, and the trees turn their white necks away. Couples loom, pause, and lose themselves to words, long love, turning to each other. Lately, I've been losing you in weather, not pretty thimble domes but lack and need We try to reconstruct the scene, the park, then snow…

Palm Sunday

(Letter to Gary in St. Paul) Silenter, emptier, never. The sky's overcast, your weather's now mine. I am troubled in a hundred places— And contradicted, contradicted— By the dull light.      Polyphonic weather, Eminentest mood-tinker, sensitivest Most biological face of the physical Globe, least durable, least endurable: Accelerate my ascent and erosion, Erode my nascent ascents,…

Gardenia

The night my sister wiggled into her black sheath and shielded her first corsage, I took a deep breath and learned about love: how sweet the flower, how the delicate blossom would bruise. I don't remember the boy's name, if my sister had a good time, only a new kind of sadness that was all…

Letter

The words I try to write to you, pressing The pen against your silence, against your silence Fail. I should send you The blank pages, with their blue lines So near the surface (the places You let me kiss you, inside the elbow, The back of the knee. . .), or I should lie to…

Easter Sunday

(Letter to Clyde Rykken) Empty church, perplexingly uplifting Morning. I swept the sanctuary twice; Palm-spears, and the corn-silk nerve-threads palms spawn, Eluded my diligentest brooming. The sacristy will smell like a hay-loft 'til the end of Pentecost. The parish (Shame! I resist the pun, 'pon my sexton's Whisky oath. Shilling for the new grave! Ah,…

Stuffed Rabbit

It's last call when a man you've met asks if you'd like a black russian. All night, he's talked sports and half- listened to you. Still—he has a lean body and luxurious beard and you like lean bodies and luxurious beards. So you nod and take little sips of vodka and kahlua. Sandwiched in a…

Denial

We are not there now, we are never Driving into the fog (in love but, having decided This is wrong, not touching) On our way to Stinson beach. Taking the hard way, anyway, There were road signs, CONSTRUCTION AHEAD DETOUR, into a mist that became Progressively heavier until, at last, It was almost—caught in your…

Minnesota

Hesitate? The wide long river’s Extravagance Decrees the boundaries of my insouciance, confides how Little, how hourly less, it cares For the parallel blunders of its Parallel banks, twin antinomies, Wind-wrinkled water’s edgy lapping, Mammered quibbles among pebbles, Clishmaclaver, quaggy and wearisome Thoughts of no stature, Windlestraw, zilch-billows, death- Blusters. Lord lift me above my…