Poetry

Under pressure Mick tells me one of the jokes truckers pass among themselves: Why do women have legs? I can't imagine; the day is too halcyon, beyond the patio too Arizonan blue, sparrows drunk on figs and the season's first corn stacked steaming on the wicker table. . . .I give up; why do they?…

Four a.m. and the trees in their nocturnal turns seem free from our ideas of what trees should be like the moment in a dance you let your partner go and suddenly she's loose fire and unapproachable. Yesterday I saw L. again, by a case of kiwis and she seemed wrongly tall as if wearing…

You're going to waste away in dreams so thin they'll slide down a long straw and disappear in a stream going counterclockwise in Tasmania. We're having fritters and syrup, wheatcakes and strawberry butter, double-roasted coffee, and heavy cream. It's your summer solstice, blue green basic morning. This is positively your last chance. I mean it….

October now, it must be snowing at that dead end where mountains' cupped hands held us up to sky. Here, a surprise snow I watch from your hospital window as I pluck dead blossoms from plants that crowd the sill. What aches as much as anything is the ruse of only weeks ago: you and…

Yellow fingers lift a match to Virginia's shreds and edges: Deeply I pull smoke in, and blood faints at the door. My young father coughs, gags, and wipes his lips with pale narrow fingers: When he looks at his shaking hands, splaying them out to gaze at them, I understand how much his nails please…

The owl called to me from the dark. “Where is my pocketbook?” it quavered. The night before, it played its flute and Sang, “I cannot find my glasses anywhere” With tremolo enough to split a rock. A chuckle at the end of every cry Suggested humor in all this. I had some trouble seeing any,…

for CHW (1916-1979) 1. The Mountain A meadow in Vermont, on Bread Loaf Mountain. I watched you walk with a dancer's quick walk along the path on the edge of the meadow. Your shoulders were bent like a scholar's but your legs were the legs of a dancer. Your jacket, thick for a hot summer…

That sadness of white bread— To weave a noose of farewell Like the lightbulb over the supper table Transcribing a circle, where your forehead meets the world, Where your words become other people And you are doled out, eaten without butter. *     *     *      Because I love you the ceiling and the air Suddenly matter. Split clear…

The Nazi within me thinks it's time to take charge. The world's a mess; people are crazy. The Nazi within me wants the windows shut tight, new locks put on the doors. There's too much fresh air, too much coming and going. The Nazi within me wants to be boss of traffic and traffic lights….