Article

Loss

Put no trust in nothing, not even yourself Yesterday was like summer, today snow blows I’ve walked six miles with an axe and wedge Actually make my living near a river that runs bright water Home to a small hawk found mangled in the woodshed Eyes opening, I load my rifle but won’t use it…

Blood Telling

"Hurry up! Can't you drive any faster?" "I do and we'll land in a ditch!" A madeup moon, my mother's frantic face, bobbed over the gray upholstery horizon of the Studebaker seat. "You, Bette! Move your head! Your neck's not stiff, is it? Is it?" "Now take it easy, honey," my father's voice soothed. "Take…

Two Figures

negotiate their way across a frozen lake, careful not to touch, careful not to upset each other’s balance. The house is quiet; I have been thinking about them all evening and now, my window spills across the ice the narrow path of light they are walking on. It’s hard to see but I think the…

The Spring

Beneath the fabric of leaves, sycamore, beech, black oak, in the slow residual movement of the pool;            in the current braiding over the wedged branch, and pouring from the ledge, urgent, lyric,                  the source marshalls every motion to the geometric plunder of rock — arranging a socket of water, a cold estate…

Age

Last night I was seduced. "Lord," you must think, "this I've heard before." But then I could be wrong. I constantly overestimate my powers of intuition. Some days I walk to my store, my small shoebox of a bookshop, and feel the women near the bus stop stare at my balding head, my cracked shoes…

Philemon and Baucis

My envy of people my age or older whose parents both are living frequently, alas, takes the form of contempt. First, the parents are old. Old and bald and fat and slow or old and ill or at the very least mothers like what their daughters fear themselves to become, fathers blinking owlish at the…

Exile

The widow refuses sleep, for sleep pretends that it can bring him back. In this way, the will is set against the appetite. Even the empty hand moves to the mouth. Apart from you, I turn a corner in the city and find, for a moment, the old climate, the little blue flower everywhere.

The Black Dog

From Anecdotes from an alley "There's a fire at Voorthuyzen's bakery on Main Street," his father had said during breakfast. "A large blazing fire," he had added. Half an hour later he shuffled back, his head lowered. His father had laughed at him. His mother had found it childish that he responded so angrily to…

Weekend at the Biltmore

     ”I’ll meet you under the clock.” When, set loose like children Kept in through the long winter, Spring finally came, And the old hotel seemed theirs, all New York, Each moment announcing its presents, Fresh, self-invigorating pleasures To be sought out again and again, As if eyes and brains and nerves Can only absorb so…