Poetry

Popsicle stick is the diminutive of tongue depressor, it is a serious implement to contemplate, you reach with your little pink chocolated hands, you want more— my large clean hand withdraws what was once the ice cream bar I shared with my baby son, we cleaned it with our last licks, & I dry it…

In the drafty land of a day's work, where bone saws sing down to the tone of marrow, these men in white coats live out my dream surgeons gone wild. Outside, I hear the mallet man, halting the morning between eyes with his dull thud, and the knife of the skinner slips beneath hides, the…

Let it start to rain, the streets are empty now. Over the roof hear the leaves coldly conversing in whispers; a page turns in the book left open by the window. The streets are empty, now it can begin. I am not there. Like you I wasn’t present at the burial. This morning I have…

We are not mentioned by others, never greeted by friends. We return to a place and follow a mystery to its little hole. The sky had no imprint, it rained the way ink drips off newspapers, and we hid behind that year as if behind a blank billboard. Perhaps a cold observer could have written…

“. . . half-lit with whiskey“ — Seamus Heaney half with wit and this long night is illuminated for its full many hours. My friend is this bottle; and my friend is raising her glass. Here's to you, bottle and friends, glowing with the compassion adequate liquor brings us. No work tomorrow; and no one…

The South China Sea drives in its herd of wild blue horses. We go at the volleyball like a punchingbag: Clem's already lost a tooth & Johnny's got a kisser closing his left eye. Frozen airlifted steaks burn on a wire grill, & miles away we hear machineguns go crazy. Pretending we're somewhere else, we…

The last birds rush, shadowless, through evening's thick, sweet light — color of honey, color of the pine of our paneled ceiling, beneath which I drowse too soon, beneath which I wake at dawn unable to recall my dreams, and lie for my five minutes staring at the pine's knots, hurling the mind's useless hatcher…

“Illness is a long lane. . .” —John Keats I can't forgive an old theme in spring. Powdered aspirin on the lips of white lillies, the antiseptic color injected in these lawns reminds me of a beautiful illness but I can't imagine coming down with it. I'm out walking in a mood; it shames me…

(L.K.) Can't you tell me when or where you'll be here or there, now and then? Water laps at Crete as you leave it, then turns around Cape Cod as you land on these American shores. On the Gulf down here the sun strikes me as Aegean—remember the algae spreading on the pond each year…