How would it be if you took yourself off to a house set well back from a dirt road, with, say, three acres of grass bounded by road, driveway, and vegetable garden? Spring and summer you would mow the field, not down to lawn, but with a bushhog, every six weeks or so, just often…
Through the clotted street and down the alley to the station, the halting rhythm of the bus disrupts her dream and makes the broad blond fields of grain yield to an agitated harbor, whales nuzzling flank to flank. Now the bus settles in its gate. She wakes, smoothes her stockings, gathers her packages, the stunned…
In vehicles that travel only south, We camp from isle to isle and hand to mouth. You South downhill from Ozarks and from Smokies, Cockroach country, greet us Counter-Okies. California ceases at the pier; The sea itself drops off six miles from here. One town with just two things to do. No more. Become a…
Lo & behold. Yes, peat bogs in Louisiana. The dead stumble home like swamp fog, our lost uncles & granddaddies come back to us almost healed. Knob-fingered & splayfooted, all the has-been men & women rise through nighttime into our slow useless days. Live oak & cypress counting these shapes in a dance human forms…
Someone is late, I'm waiting. The hot smell of rain on the street brings you close, now that you are of little use and gone. Two boys throw yellow and blue balloons. Distended with water they swag down the air, plop into the boys' open hands. This will be summer to them, in Palo Alto…
The only major city, one would hope, Below the level of a periscope. An air so wet, a sewer-damp so ill, One had as well be under water still. The muddy river cakes us, camouflages. Maddened goats, my crew go off in barges. At a distance — I do not refer To feet and inches…
You'll always be my friend. Is that clear, Robert Lee? We go beyond the weighing of each other's words, hand on a shoulder, go beyond the color of hair. Playing Down the Man on the Field we embraced each other before I discovered girls. You taught me a heavy love for jazz, how words can…
In the kitchen the toaster pops too quickly, the water boils away and something burns, and she turns on herself, a predator breaking a mirror. Door bell jammed with no one there, the screen door sags, its rusted mesh reducing her porch light to squares. People gather and huddle for advice then telephone. Inside, she's…
The model of the cruiser New Orleans is smaller than life but larger than me. The glass case with table stands six feet seven inches high (I'm 5′ 8″ sober) and about fifteen feet long. How I clean it, once a month, on a small aluminum stepladder, is, first, to brasso the dim brass frame…
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