Poetry

The Oracle

I see the lion as the lion sees the girl he slowly devours in a silent film— a flash of sun-torn flesh— before the vision fades. How foolish she was to wander the woods alone, forgetting the warnings, the memory she had of herself before the woods became a thought from which the lion leapt,…

Make Believe

We will eventually be archaeology, but now in America I tell my young daughter the new headlights are a bluish-white instead of the smoky yellow of my upbringing. She’s busy with her bubble-making, her dig in the flowerbed, her pantomimed banquet, phantom guests dining on her small handfuls of weeds and grasses. Precisely, the lit…

In the Moment

Some days the pond wears a glaze of yellow pollen. Some days it is clean-swept. The trout leap up, feasting on insects. A modest size, it sits like a soup tureen in a surround of white pine where Rosie, 14 lbs., some sort of rescued terrier, part bat (the ears), part anteater (the nose), shyly paddles…

Labyrinth

rain frog          thorn bug          tent bat along a broken mosaic    a spongy    ever-dwindling path soaring trees     woody buttresses      their massive twisted fins lofty crowns     shoulder to shoulder     climbing lime-green vines     restless palms     one…

Sunnies

They mouthed the surface of the creek for nymphs tasting their temporary life or striders sculling the tension that was neither water nor air but border, merely. The way a dream nibbles at awareness, the sunnies dared the surface. From the footbridge I saw them school in the little depth below the watercolor that was…

This, Then

Every once in a while, it’s true: I get sick of dying. Iambic ghosts choiring                                        their lovely, churchless songs, All the lines of the poem leaning toward terminus Like rows of low windbent weeds—    …