for Philip Dow Two hundred waxwings! Swarming on berry bunches like bees to a comb, bats on a cave ceiling. Their greedy thrashes flounced branchlets every which way so the tree looked palsied with panic — or ecstasy? We focused on each soft brown squirm flashing small bursts of wild yellow. Each bird was stemmed…
The zinnias, not blood-red as planned, nudge out strange yellowish blooms, never reach the height the packet claimed. Verbena sprays turn purple where I'd wanted white. Love-in-a-mist foliage spreads, a lovely feathery green, but never buds. I can't stop fiddling with them, watering, urging, staring them down as though I can will them into a…
You are far away, Space dipping and swaying in time, And I have something to say But do not know just how. If I could speak in light (Eight and a half minutes from sun to earth) I would, words on solar wind, Lighting up the polar sky, Curtains curving, Rivers of noun and verb….
When, as a child, I spelled the lines on the stones around me where lay those peaceable strangers for whom the essential mood was a sweet-tempered quietude (since here they had resigned not only the strength of flesh but all their tears and anger, subsumed in a common ground — no speech to soothe or…
for C. deGravelles Can you remember when the air just smelled like pine trees, wet dirt, a few flowers? Worlds on worlds still tumble over and this river which was always muddy retains its surface sparkle. But only a fond heart builds immortal faith on a few bright bubbles. Look here: to dig a dirt…
From Boston south he talks of citrus fruit And extra children who pop like extra toes. A good man cuts them off or he makes room. His girlfriend knows that she will never laugh. There is an old man who has lived in shoes, Refinished basements, plastered catacombs Where the cold walls felt like a…
I saw the picture in Newsweek or Time and couldn't believe who was back in the news. But there it sat, encased in antique gold and pedestrian prose, apart from the rest of her imaginably lush lost body, which it recalls with false metonymy. The news is littered with the bodies of women — whores,…
Tommy Priola is on the mound, brother of curve ball specialist Nick, and I am at the plate waiting for the first pitch of the game. I am in the process of examining a singular event in my life. Priola, unlike his brother, is a right-hander and his usual position is that of catcher. I'm…
Thunderclouds gathered above the highway like a bruise rising to the surface of the sky. I crossed the Mississippi and rain fell, the world became water, grey matter. In the stillness just ahead of the storm I saw snowy egrets lifting above a field. Their bodies rose, a chorus catching the currents of the mightier…
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