Poetry

The Visit

No resolution, understanding when she comes abrupt, final anger, rage at the painful displacement, the brutal use of rational love, the meagerness of the intentional offering.

Onlie X

The constant X equals all variables: even strangers soon to be wonders just amount to X. Cistercians, all `sister’, in any case sexless, insist the last & best is left for X. So Wilde’s little swallow made children cry, don’t fly! But action is prayer for the poor and/or ill; just makes equal stone and…

To The Swallows Of Viterbo

You plummeting shards of the darkness, You rising stars in the light still Fumbling for the rickety trellis Of morning, your suddenness fills The whole unsteady air with whirring Where we awaken quiet together, Breathing soundlessly, no least stirring While your wingbeats alter the weather Of daylight arriving beyond The window, quick-feathered rushing And calling…

Poem for Potential

All-sufficing person come alive again! Light’s at attention — polite at the end of the sea. High gold & celibate, a bold celestial glare — Here. Sharks in the pines, the park shines. This isn’t the only time. Once before you stood on a hill of sand — wind in your child-like hair — blowing,…

Taking In Wash

Papa called her Pearl when he came home late, swaying as if the wind touched only him. Towards winter his skin paled, buckeye to ginger root, cold drawing the yellow out. The Cherokee in him, Mama said. Mama never changed: when the dog crawled under the stove and the back gate slammed, Mama hid the…

After The Fall

Swam a dream through the ivory gates. Eden, it was Eden, she moved in a green light not of our skies. Reality denied, her lips hid much joy.      Voices rippled      in the marvelous      garden, verse      was composed and      rehearsed.      Beasts had no      fury, fear      never entered there. In that wondrous garden God too strolled rich…