A thousand rocks grow smaller. The tide returns again and again. Eternal truths wash up on the shore hidden amongst the shells and fish bones. No man will ever find them. In small houses, the women wait, tying and untying black shawls around their shoulders black scarves around their heads. Birds do not come here….
None of this seems real, seen from the east and older. The red-eyed Guernsey bull, his warning signal stopped by the stooks of corn. This wilderness is Thickly Settled and the Berkshires’ blue surrounds my day. In Amherst, everything checked in its fall: sacrificial stance of thistle, flash of pumpkins in the field, tomatoes…
I tried to say the truth But the truth kept going away. It always belonged to somebody else, It kept refusing to belong to me. This got up my fighting spirit As I said, the truth belongs to me, I will show it to you, listen to me, I have the truth locked in my…
(for Peppino) We loiter in the cobblestone alley, Beans, Clams, Yom-Yom and me smoking punk. Snip the wiry stem, trim the nubby end, scratch fire from a zipper, then pass the stink around. William Penn designed these city blocks, rectangular, brick, cross-hatched by alleys to prevent the spread of fire. So fire climbs down my…
You tell me you will be my true false bottom to my suitcase more luggage than anyone can carry. The snow falls easily at first as if it were meant to be as if it had no choice then harder as if it were leaving home. At home we watch the snow through windows of…
Why does one say that the heart sings? when it is not the heart, but the voice that does: if the leg could sing, it might; if the pump lodged in the chest could sing, it would make such clear deep sounds, as only that cellist makes, playing Bach, the man of the brook, whose…
A pink motel hovers over the river, Shangri-la where local athletes purchase local women in the lounge . . . Is this where I grew up? I paddle in my Oldtown canoe, looking for relics of riverbank that pre-date highway and turnpike. Blackberries ripen by the black water, a snapping turtle suns on a rock,…
I get there with a huge sack slung over my shoulder: brown, with patches. The gate is locked, the moon up like a thumb. I came through the forest where the spider balances on its web, carrying eggs for the branch. I came through the valley where the slow rope of mountain climbers let themselves…
To be alive to witness the snakes’ return to chase the papists and britons from Faerieland allowing Patrick’s sisters prayers to Druid gods: O pagan green! Mo Chraoibhin Cno! Siobhan, throw your ribbon round the last six. Braid them tightly, let them rest close on the velvet hills: O pagan green! Mo Chraoibhin Cno! And…
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