Poetry

  • The Earth Swept Clean

    The earth swept clean of creatures not its own: earth, ocean, air, to you do we belong only? No! The long climb up from slime turning on a dime      remains, hanging on by a thread to the dead generations, lowly, encapsulated though once I read in TIME, that wisdom of the week we twitchy moderns…

  • Beating a Fast Tattoo

    “. . . it is not War which is tearing up the world, it is Conscience . . .”      —in The Fixer “The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling?”      —St. Augustine `How does it feel when you fall?‘ Asked plainly enough at the dinner table Mother…

  • To the Savage Child

    It must be hard to be a girl, Kamala. There are stories how you were stolen from the field, a baby, your mother hoeing far away as a she-wolf passed, took pity, lifted you by the scruff home to the den, raised you as the slow cub in her litter. A long time until you…

  • Win A Vigil

    Welcome to our show How Funny Can You Get. Without saying or doing anything contestants must appear so clearly we can’t help laughing. Sit down, no jokes or lettuce tuxedos tolerated. Be yourself here. Don’t smile. When you think in an objective sense you are funny enough raise the right hand. If we laugh then,…

  • To His Feminine Self

    Since no other women is like you, I wish You’d stop pretending to be representative. Nice number, for shame, tsk, tsk, Bringing your healthier sisters to witness In your case; we know, little darling, that this Difficulty Transcends sex. Style, to be sure, is neuter. Grace Does not have a space for writing in “M”…

  • The Piney Forest

    If you were to go there alone you would find whole branches rising by themselves from the floor . . . You would see leaves and pine needles leap off into the still air, and return. There are animals in that forest without voices. Songs drifting through, like fog. Slowly you would notice the trees…