Poetry

after John Clare All dark, and my feet against          the feed-room floor                   scuff cement, find their way          to the light, the switch, which flares on          with a snap of bird-                   wings’ nimble shuffle          and flight, the rafters blowing off feathers,          then my hands against                   the grain bin’s…

Eight years later the woman is given a house for five months at the edge of town in the desert. It’s August and the desert is green. When rain falls, she drives beyond the dark clouds. Past an antelope resting, legs under it, head raised, white marks. Drives slowly around a turtle. If the man…

was next week with a garden in it, next winter with the glow of the unborn. My back up against the mountain, face to the snowy field,—glassy branches of the apple tree. If there was a mistake somewhere I didn’t know it, I only knew the deodar choked on sky,—despite the rumor of unaltered roots….

In the owl’s nest the apprentices sit at the workbench of hunger, jostle and plea and reckless silence, and out in the night —the wind rising, nonce of stars— wings shove aside distance (antipodal stint, fragrance of quicklime), a steeple and moody bronze, spiritual ruckus, loose haft of prayer, lawns stitched with mushrooms, desires and…

I I I . I kissed a flame, what did I expect. Those days, you painted in fire. Tangerine, gold: one would have had to be a pilgrim to walk through that wall of molten glass. And purification could be conceived, if not attained, only after many years, in autumn, in a fire greater than…

The sermon made my husband weep, my baby sing. The singing was innocence, wrong and wry, so I was out the church door, boy in arms, the wind a bigger sting than death. I’ve never felt so myself around death than in that churchyard, son on my shoulders. I pronounced the chiseled names for him:…

after Stevens    1 She is not a cello, not a pear.    2 The nipple is a houselike form composed of nearly straight lines. It is very dark.    3 A crack in the wall behind her of a winglike precision. It moves from her left hip to her right shoulder.    4 The…

My secret pleasure is the echo my indifference makes when you call on me—even in praise, even in distress. You refuse to believe your senses; so you ignore clear indications of thoughtful malice. Yet my example instructs: you strike out at one another ceaselessly and with growing violence; doubt blossoms as spring comes on. My…

Deer Isle Kai says, “Here, let me fix that, you don’t know how.” This elegant mechanism, a present from my daughter, topped by its own wind hat, engineered not to turn inside out in Nor’easters or August hurricanes. Ingenious invention of China and Egypt, emblem of rank in remote antiquity, collapsible shade, pampering portable sunscreen…