Poetry

  • Moving In

    Hot, sticky night, the moving truck is at the door. Only a few weeks since your death. Your things arrive, the contents of your life spill over mine, disrupting my careful rooms. The moving men stumble up the stairs. I hear myself call, “Put the desk in the bedroom, gentlemen, please.” Already your elaborate courtesies…

  • In Kingston: Hope’s Rumor

    Hope in Kingston drives a Volvo that rattles. We’ve missed our turn to the hotel: the soothing quiet flourishing palms, veranda columns, fresh paint and the bulldog asleep under the table while his Aussie      master nurses the last night’s drink. No yams or jerky pork except on Wednesday by the pool, white jackets and a…

  • Gestorben in Zurich

    To be on Zurichberg (the price of gold climbing faster than the #5 tram) to be on Zurichberg where they buried Joyce between the Dolder and the zoo in earshot of a dozen tourist languages and the lions’ roar, to be at Joyce’s grave under a pewter sky returns me to the epiphytes at Kew…

  • Facts

    For my father In your orange flight suit, you approached the Renault we knew might stall after a hard winter freeze. With your pilot’s hand, you turned the engine. When it caught, I ran down the walkway you had shoveled. Cinderella lunch-box under my arm, I climbed in the frozen capsule, and waited for you…

  • Rumors of the Turning Wheel

    I lived among a people who said, pig, for luck. They might have said stork or      flounder for these beings were familiar to them, as were rat and donkey. But they said, pig. No doubt from ingrained habit. Real pig, fella. Some pig you had, my friend. What pig. Good pig! Hey, have a piggy…

  • Complaint

    God said He would destroy Earth’s violent flesh, but spare me. Was there gratitude enough for such a burden? My family blessed Him. They built the ark according to His dimensions, cubit by square cubit. He was specific, demanding gopher wood, three stories pitched within, one window, and two of every creature. Opening a door…

  • Madonnas Touched Up With a Goatee

    Most ancient Metaphysics, (poor Metaphysics!) All decked up in imitation jewelry. We went for a stroll, arm in arm, smooching in public Despite the difference in our age. It was still the 19th century, she whispered. We were in a knife-fighting neighborhood Among some rundown relics of the Industrial Revolution. Just a little further, she…

  • Aubade

    Each day, each morning, before the sun can touch one edge of anything, within the oak’s shadow an unfamiliar bird begins to sing. Against the sky, the leaves the dark has polished are now shingled like the grisaille wings of the bird, and the whole garden’s gone over with the same meticulous hand, the grasses…

  • Bluff

               Land’s cape bold as Joseph’s,                  colors luminous as the dreamy hem of horizon,            till night falls, or rises      from the inner shade of evergreens,            or expands      from air you just traded with local trees                  quick as light turns and dies. After afternoon’s                  omniscience from the lofty…