Poetry

How deep is frost?      I dig six inches deeper. That is deep enough. Why do you live in this fenced-in garden?      I am the lord of the garden, the retainer of the gardener      who makes his plans and mends his fences. What can’t      get out is his business. Have you no friends?      I emulate my…

1 You need the woman wearing blue to remind you of the future. Her body has the shape of it. You need the movement of a wrist turning in its sleeve capable unlocking air. The bone, the tool turning under the skin unlocking the skin. The bone, a mineral of light unlocking and you remember…

In Ohio I ran into a red barn floating. I taped it. I put it back. It kept swinging open. It kept falling apart. In New York I wove concrete into my gaggle of veins. I stopped the flute of my ears with thick bungs. In New Hampshire winds entered my ear. I became a…

1. Ulysses to Calypso I think I’m looking for Ithaca, not myself. My heart, brain, ivory bones below the surface might be pearls to serious girlfriends, but I consider myself an onion, not an oyster. You might get wise by staring at your face in the water, listening to Sirens, asking the dead in hell…

You make yourself new again. Along your sides, only a thin line marks the scar where you lay open one whole summer. Steam rises from your body in this heat. You move slowly you sit up to your chin in yourself. One morning you are a blue floor. You are rising, you are learning to…

Speckled grey smooth belly of a lake trout. Azure swirls, cerulean glaze plum-rose smear runs clear along the lip. What a pleasing affirmative heft these bowls smoking clean from the dishwater blessed with a calm and rightness bless us.

1. When they are babies, don’t put them down, even for the telephone 2. Feed them whenever they want 3. They must not cry! (Colic can be relieved by placing them, belly down, on the dryer, while it is running warm) 4. Don’t make them sleep alone 5. Sleep with them until they are four…

Transience of all things mutability odes ruins something any thing two step. In college I had a teacher he wrote a book One Man’s Meter he sang Keats to “You’re the cream in my coffee” and advised me “Read a good book after dinner every night.”

I chose a forest, once, bridges of branches, animal tunnels, This forest spoke to me—basso profundo My outer balance was maintained by setting Space from fore and hind, in direct proportion to Nature’s inclines Inside, I put my bedroom in the basement, ate in the attic and talked and worked in the middle Rearranged the…