Poetry

village night

this is the first night no morning comes no morning nudges noon no lateday sunset collects in evening’s cistern; festival rot rusts flowerpetals down open sewers, cobblestones fasten echoes of haytime frivolity; early smell of snow gives everyone harvest jitters and the trees fake light while the moon hides under an unloaded wagon all night…

The Toll of Industry

He’s out of work, he naps Extravagantly, his lines of credit Tighten, his boundaries dissolve, he’s So hung up on her, he counts The rows of wire squares on his screen Windows, he counts Eyelashes, he counts the hours or days Until he sees her Until she breaks the date And he starts again from…

Return to an Island

I was middle-aged before I learned not even place is constant. Moths surrender flight each morning, like the huge ones we found dead against the screen. Madmen even cage the kling-kling bird. Places drift. Where had everything gone? Boulder, mountain, meadow, beach wore time’s integument like mist. Poinciana blurred. Palms, once a silhouette of summer,…

Full Moons

The first full moon I wanted to take a taxi home — we were that far apart. The second full moon tides pulled at the beach of our vacation.      We made love in a room we couldn’t afford but that had a view. The third full moon you were too tired so we watched television….

Possessions: Randall Jarrell

There were days I loved women so well, I became them. I unrolled my hair in the mirror and cried. If I became myself, walked along the sidelines, and heard the shuffled gravel sounds, everything passed too quickly: the children dreaming, birds circling over the exhaust of travelers. I talked to others under eucalyptus, by…

Scott Huff

Think tonight of sixteen year old Scott Huff of Maine driving home fell asleep at the wheel, his car sprang awake from the weight of his foot head on into a tree. God, if you need him take him asking me to believe in you because there are yellow buttercups, salmon for my heart in…

Big Sheep Knocks You About

           I’ve shorn over two hunn’ert in a day,            but big sheep knocks you about. I used            to go mad at it, twisting and turning            all night. Couldn’t sleep after a rough            day with the sheep. 1 In town, in the foodshop, the men are making sandwiches, cutting bread, cutting meat,…

Since Nothing Is Impossible

for&nbsp— This is a simple poem Because our lives can be simple. On the pier, Listening to the fish Gather in the shallow waters, the wind Blowing across the phosphorus, I stood for hours in the pale halos of the harbor. I was thinking of you, the way An arm remembers salt burning the skin….