Poetry

No salt glaze on a dish is so delicately cracked as are this morning's leaves, shelled in ice. The cherry stones still linked to the tree, the cables of the rose arbor, the hips and myrtle husks and curled threads of the Adam's Needle have clung to the clear thought of ice. Scatterings of ice…

Where has this face grown up before? The tintype glassing in the drawer- What, in this afro-ed cousin's-child? This meristem of sallow cheeks, this Thompson twig of fretted lids, this little hollow to the ribcage? If June and Cedar Grove were gone, still this blithe tune all triplets would play on. Cousin and offspring sit…

I want to remember the cold mornings I spent that winter in the front seat of my uncle's ancient pickup. It was simple work, the two of us waiting for the first signs of light, listening to the steady lisp of snow over the crowns of loblolly pines. We both knew that near us speckled…

And for sure his soul is as good as gone as the frayed ribbon quoting John and now marking a forgotten page in the Analects and at the bottom of the stairs the accumulation of coats in the front closet      and now perhaps the need to talk to whoever has rung the bell and rung…

In the last photograph taken of my father, his mouth was open to speak, and his eyes, like glass to me, are weak and without focus. Or else the grainy film, malignant cells working, hid him behind a gray gauze screen. It is fall, and the sun, lowered on a string, is small and halting…

They say they'll need the dental records to prove he is the same person but I tell them the child that was me has gone no- where to live. He hears his name call­ ing me out of the darkness; he is this tangled clump of weeds beneath the snow. He comes every- where with…

That night we walked in the Georgia dark dogs barked and ran in circles. Guided not by the star of Bethlehem but by the beneficent sign of Texaco we traveled toward the only light we saw. Weariness grew in your arms as the child began to cry. You opened your blouse and filled the dark…

I saw the wind tilt the corn: Will and Humility, just an image. The sugarcane cut at the same height, the field freshly burned smelling of flan, the bittersweet roots in my house.

In Memoriam: Columbia Military Academy 1905-1978 The itch of blue sky covers me like wool. If I look quickly I'll see the thin shadows running from themselves, the battalions of light blowing away with the years. The bugle boy with one eye winks as if to say, “Forgive.”            The flag unfurls atop the brass…