Poetry

The minister, humorous, describes their “shacking up for years.” I had tried on his caftan of sheer silk in the hall, thinking it was a bridesmaid’s stole. Our bride in swaths of pink, black— an abstract fabric that makes me think of walls in Florence or Rome, or Petra “rose-red city half as old as…

First the white cat named after Indians Slipped in—too fat by half, White marked with five black spots like sudden stones In the snow—poked in through his hidden door. Set flowing through the house a draft, A chill tangled in the winter of his fur. Alerted to those skulks, those leaps, those claws, The sparkless,…

Shorebirds occupy a patch of sand near the ocean. Eighteen or twenty godwits work, driving their long frail beaks into sand recently made slate-colored by the falling tide. A dozen turn their backs to the surf and walk inland, striding on legs purposeful and thin. Their abrupt walk integrates motions that seem contrary to us,…

It is always among sleepers we walk. We walk in their dreams. None of us Knows what he is as he walks In the dream of another. Tell me my name. Your tongue is blurred, honeyed with error. Your sleep's truth murmurs its secret. Tell me your name. Out at the edge, Out in the…

These fish are older than I. Every morning I learn from the koi how to swim in the wind- ruffled pond: the flow of the tail, the fan of the fins in water, eyes open all ways to the shadow-life moving beyond us. Who knows what goes on under the bridge, the plank where I…

1. Life Style Invincible begetters, assorted Scruffses have always lived hereabouts in the woods trapping beaver or fox, poaching enough deer to get by on. Winters, they barricade their groundsills with spoiled hay, which can ignite from a careless cigarette or chimney spark. In the Fifties, one family barely got out when the place lit…

It takes a needle to complete the job—      pick the two choked eyes empty of the thread,      pick out the particles of sweater wool. It takes a dark, thin book to tray the pickings      (they're hard to gather off her skirt, the floor)      and chute them in the trash can;      takes her tea-tin container for…

At your feet, I am a shoemaker’s apprentice, Toxic in a long day of fumes. I’m listening To the fluorescent light come on In April, an Isadora flinging her hot white scarf Across a month mottled by the chemicals Of Daylight Savings Time, in the spokes of the wheels Of hormones turning in the unseasoned…