Poetry

Because I know a mistake can be fatal, I pick only what identifies without question, puffball, meadow mushroom, hen-of-the-woods. And though there are some delicacies I'll miss, Amanita rubescens, a pale red fruit which may or may not contain the toxin Amanita for which it is named, I prefer to proceed this way, cautiously, holding…

Down its dirt road that turns past a boarded-up church, even the island's town dump is an island, insulated by popple and hackmatack from every approximate homesite. The usual pick-ups and trailers back up to it: it is far from sanitary. In spite of how often a parked yellow Cat gets started to doze it,…

—Hiroshige When torches sweep the land and towns smolder, crumbling like ash from the burning shelf, remember, this is only dawn. Red swipes at the sky, a yellow lion-mask yawning, while paper streamers flutter and snap, pinned to boats on the river's back. When clouds are slashed to show white sky breathing in its silk…

Stone comes to hand when bread & kiss have lost, stones embedded in earth like food in a root cellar. “They turned the tank & drove the other way” Little hand, little stone: scatter & clank in the voice of child-poverty. Far from the Wars of the Roses but always with us. *     *      * The…

The rest of my life is disguised in my hand, any intelligence but mostly confusion stalking over it, Summerian tracks found in some tedious dig near the holy land.            There is a woman now poised over it. I remember a dark cloud coming up fast & dry fields      corn, soybeans waiting in a dim…

Because finally the personal is all that matters, we spend years describing stones, chairs, abandoned farm houses— until we're ready. Always it's a matter of precision, what it feels like to kiss someone or to walk out the door. How good it was to practice on stones which were things we could love without weeping…

“Listen,” you snap, intent on other goings-on where sparrows say their names to a dusty clump of trees, and August, out of tune, slides out in a drone of katydids and rain. “Listen and silent have the same letters. A bird says its name when it sings. Some birds live ten years. The doc gives…

The leaves have their own civilization. I won't say decline. What they do is starve and the brilliant yellows, reds, porcelain coppers of these      days beg for nothing more but die quietly. I walk the streets on their behalf, holding my heart up like a bowl, and falling, they fall as a boat falls into…

Winter delivered this morning's pallor: a glint of steel in gloved hands, hydrant skulls, sparrows dropping from their laden gates and latticed pines, pibald and waiting. But when the name that clattered to my lips released a team of white geldings, snow-driven, manes blown toward the narrow line of windbreaks, I could believe in pure…