Poetry

Start in a farmer's field, his daughter gone forever this time, snow dusting the corn stalks, the abandoned Chieftain, coyote fur on the cattleguard. He hears what's not here, and the usual noises. Go under water. The world grabs the diver and breathes for him. He hears heartbeat. He hears the current dragging her sad…

I They knew how your good looks would bring men off the street and how a cave is a good place to linger invisibly— no, not you, you were to be out front, the three brothers inside waiting for wealthy victims, waiting tense as spiders. They promised you a cut. And we must remember that…

For Camille Our last fledgling launched into a churning flock of college freshpersons! Independence Day in September. Once we blow old feathers out of the house, Darling, think of all we can do: redecorate, travel, talk and make love without interruption, stoke bonfires with junk mail, find new jobs. Outside the car window, soybean fields…

Remember how you took me down to the dock in Michigan one night to show me stars, your latest hobby: the air was like ink, blue-black, and shadowless. The lamplight that we carried made the narrow boards bob at our feet, the small water warbling on either side. With the light out, lying on our…

1 Edges: as a ditch defending a field, a rim of water spelling out an island. 2 Close-up: tall blades of grass, two seed stalks (stripped umbrella ribs) arrange a landscape. Foreground, the fringed black fungus splits, asymetrical      as love, its three-inch mandala a diagram on black. Across the black wound, widenings uncover something like…

On a narrow street without a sign in New Haven, outside the apartment of the well-known critic, stands his royal blue sports car with the key in the ignition. The world knows his magnanimity and he has never been unkind to me. He won't mind my taking a little spin. He must be napping and…

A souvenir of this. If the moss and lichen stains Come clean, it may seem even too abstract, Not just the way old glass ages, but in that it contains What contained it, and was saved intact Knowing which side-valley we are in might Tell the story — a US medicine Jar, Or Japanese inkwell….

I’ve lost my only pair of glasses; without them, I’m practically blind and so my cadaverous optomitrist signals me into his dim office. “Have a seat,” he says. He means the chair with all the apparatus. But he’s pointing somewhere else— as if I should sit on the floor or maybe at his desk, gazing…

     When all the other trees are bare, why do those last few oak leaves cling up there            under the cold blue sky?            Don't they know when to die?      And to think: after the long freeze, when warmth revives and fills these empty trees            with the green stuff of spring,            they'll still…