Poetry

Sometimes, I’m tired of being a mother, weary of holding her in my mind, her words brighter than mine, the light’s movement on the rock. Look, I say, Listen, to what my daughter said. (tired of being) reasonable and calm, answering to Mom and how sweet (the sound) my name in her mouth, her mouth…

                             I’ve come a long way to the pulpit today to advance our causes: No more coal-mine canaries. Abolish Susan Jeffries who teases Max Biggins who sits on the seesaw and cries and cries. May she admit she wants to marry him; may the foremen confess that oft in the dark and brute weight of their…

Because my son is as old as the stars Because I have no blessings Because I hold tangerines like orange tennis balls Because I sit alone and welcome morning across              the unshaved jaws of my lawn Because the houses on my street sleep like turtles Because the proper weight of beauty was her eyes              last…

carried a baby heart in my pocket neat pink packet that kept beating a quiet music or calling machine with no reception except in my hand that reached from time to time in my pocket and cradled that only connection to what might have been or was it to what might be

They could say what they liked, imitate the way I stuttered the morning Pledge, mashed the alphabet, ask how many chickens 1 plus 3 made, why my brain sat in a corner, in a class of one, refused to read or write, was nailed to my tongue, just as long as they understood that some…

There are thirteen ways to look at a blackbird, but my backyard is not     a blackbird,             and I am not Wallace Stevens, but I make do with an air conditioning unit and the remnants of an     entertainment center,             the cherry wood stain fading into sod. I look down at this plot of land like I look at…

Major or minor, says Baseball Diamond Sutra, what does it matter? The boys of summer know that nirvana is just one inning away. Deep in the outfield, a glove reaches toward sky— fireflies blink on. Over the bleachers, a blank scoreboard announces no wins, no losses.

A wild early April strangeness, crazier than any autumn evening, mild air full of flooding wind, motions of storming branches, a queer, creaky, crying sound way off, as the rain advances— What’s that?—thud of thunder? a big tree going down? the sound of the untime after? No, only the hour of the changes, swift, oceanic,…

Far away from this house, far from Concord, grew orchards where willowy women read scrolls, not stiff-backed books, picked pomegranates, not apples. There, as in fairy tales, houses glittered like gilt-edged books, princes and princesses walked in concord under the sun’s golden apple. But women had to be practical in this house, while the transcendentalist…