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  • A Stillness

    From here you can see the herds come down from the mountain Like loose rock they pile up at the river Then break loose The first one Then the others Whole herds plunge through the water You can see the men gathered in the pass with their spears to watch Already they are waiting thousands…

  • Island

    From her place at the window she watched him, hatless, coatless, lead the mule to the wagon beneath an evenly gray sky. An empty pipe clamped between his teeth, he hitched the mule, and after she came out of the house, having kissed the children goodbye, he helped her up onto the wagon. She took…

  • Bathing Boys

    1 We blew bubbles in the bathtub, bright glistening spheres rising to the exhaust. We played with his boats, a three-legged horse, a sea-serpent wash rag. Then I cleaned his secret parts. I have known no intimacy like having a son. A daughter would do, too, but a boy like me is a timely      mirror;…

  • Deep Depression in Key West

    In vehicles that travel only south, We camp from isle to isle and hand to mouth. You South downhill from Ozarks and from Smokies, Cockroach country, greet us Counter-Okies. California ceases at the pier; The sea itself drops off six miles from here. One town with just two things to do. No more. Become a…

  • Landscape With Tractor

    How would it be if you took yourself off to a house set well back from a dirt road, with, say, three acres of grass bounded by road, driveway, and vegetable garden? Spring and summer you would mow the field, not down to lawn, but with a bushhog, every six weeks or so, just often…

  • from Departing as Air

    In 1939, both his parents dead and buried, in the Army Air Corps in basic training, Camel lay on his back and stared up at a wool blanket which hung down from the bunk above his and shaded him from the bright barracks light. As a boy he had lain under the low limbs of…