“So she thoroughly taught him that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every last bit of the body has its secret, which brings happiness to the person who knows how to wake it. She taught him that after a celebration of love the lovers…
In this poem someone has taken the edgeof one hand & swept the crumbsfrom the counter.In this poem we savewhat falls & Jesus speaks lightly,a breeze carrying the river’s scent.And all the day & night of this poema face asks what’s leftafter science, after the black & whitemovies, the forties camel hair coat, the nothing…
Write a poem about the sounds the ice makesend of winter, my father says. I could say grinds like slow gears.I could say moans and grieves, crackslike a gun in the night but holds,and I would not be wrong. There’s a remedy for winter called the tilting of the earth.It is not a sign of…
We hiked back to those desert rocks just after Christmas. We saw the whale head rising from the sea, and the parrot’s odd unstaring eye. We saw a thousand plump barrel cactuses, and a single antelope squirrel, and a half-dozen lizards running ahead of us on the path. We saw one yellow flower and saw…
After Marilyn When I let the river answer I hearthe birds, waxwing, junco… The gardener snips, pilgrims speak softly,the creek rambles. River, tell me how to rest— why moments short as a headturnbecome torrents of sludge. When the river answers it asks:“Have you come with memories, regrets, seasons, sorrows, all that you love,do you still…
Some bells ring of their own accord.Some need the boy who pulls the ropeand is lifted off his feet on the upswing.The pigeons scatter from the tower’sshaken air. Their paratrooper feathersstorm the shaft of light.By what miracle does he recall, years later,such ascension, the last timehe loved a church, was lifted,literally, by song? These wild…
Tanks run over the castleof my childhood in December.On our black-and-white TVI see the riot policeshields and truncheons.Vinegar is the only thingyou can buy in the stores.Telephones turn into toys.Because of a curfew,my father’s bedtime storiesgrow longer than ivy andwilder than calendula. Restless in bed, on the ceilingI conjure green magical birdsthat take us to…
When the pilot calls it rough air, I think of a cat’s tongue,as if the air itself were textured, as if we could feel its sandpaperlicking our skin. I swallow my ears open, and the silencewhich is not silence at all fills them. In the absence of faith I resort to magical thinking. I pray…
Something’s falling in increments of banging and slight popping, klunks,and then littlechittering rolls,the roof I mean is being hit by objectsnuts, fruitsof the season: this miserable natural worldhurls these things…and then there’re the wolf howlsor coyotesas they callthem here and the barks and snuffles of so-called bearsand yesterday I saw a small tub-bottomed bishopcrossing the…
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