Poetry

  • A Poem to Go Before Eight Lines by Jalal-ud-din-Rumi

    Leaving here, I slip out the gates of the palace garden      as autumn stuns the trees with remembrance                        and makes them come around again                                          like a memory of dervish flutes. In my mind I hear the word perfect.                  My feet touch down into cool…

  • For Anne

    On each shoulder                              I bear a jar      with each its angel                  in                        formaldehyde I wish to preserve my loves                                    You say No            let them go fly way                                    Away and when                  they come back…

  • An Encounter On Exmoor

    Watch out for the lady riding sidesaddle! On foot in the foreign gorse, we see the woman’s private ride thicken her with territory; her figure is a jowl of land rising against the sky. If she comes near, we dread she’ll ignore us. She canters from the horizon pasted to a rocking horse, eyes hidden…

  • from Returning to Earth

    “What forgotten reverie, what initiation it may be, separated wisdom from the monastery and, creating Merlin, joined it to passion?” Yeats, A Vision She pulls the sheet of this dance across me then runs, staking the corners far out at sea. *     *      * O I’m lucky got a car that starts almost everyday tho I…

  • John Muir

    He made a crude wooden clock that threw him out of bed, a strong-armed Gabriel, he called it. such genius watched the new bone carriages tottering down their chutes, the magical brooms kicking their heels            spreading around the world, until one flipped and the file      sailed from his hand into the sclera. for months…

  • Flowers

    Regarding the insides of flowers: this is something about which I have meant to write you for a long time. How awkwardly, but to a bee fascinating it must seem, going in to their sticky centers, half- repellent, touching their furry genitalia; horrible to love and seek so, being dependent: flowers’ perfectly formed hemispheres, the…

  • Conviction

    I feel most alone when someone calls me by name. Even though there are times I’m completely withdrawn: when the woman beside me, as she’s speaking abstractly, seems more alive than in bed; and although her breathing reminds me we’ll be on our own sooner or later, I feel most alone when someone calls me…

  • The Interior

    The interior is ordinary although at times the light falls like sand, the furniture edges into itself and the far corners of the room relax like seascapes in the numb hours. Everything changes when a man enters the room, especially for women. A woman who is there is unable to leave although she is uncomfortable,…

  • Circles

    My father keeps a circle of silver coins around his bed to trap angels. When they arrive to reclaim his soul the silver disintegrates the strange alloy in their wings. My mother poises at a snow-circle’s center in a game of “fox & geese” while her children disappear down a radius into some woods forever….