After the hurricane my father walked beside me in the woodland broken down; he’d known it as a child and now his wife, my mother, on the far side of the wall we came to in the end, the churchyard wall, had left him to complete his time alone. Wave after breaking wave of shredded…
American linden also American lime of the family Basswood (tiliaceae un- pronounceable virtually for this layman) but mine opposite keeps that quiet and presents facts as they appear – being a handsome street-shade tree with elephant bark in hard scaly ridges and russet twigs wandering into green until, when flowering, it fills with bees giving…
Unfinished dares avoiding rules override Avernus. Were you wrong about everything to say anything? Plausible laws insufficient to our lives are blowback For the myth of liberty. Depeopled palace trumpets Silent where they were once wild for slaughter calls. Sons and daughters commandeer our mercy for grief Discerning: Who would harm a stranger harms me….
Phantom intelligence of the soul knows touch echoes Trace gestures prone to outcompose their originals — Springs and veils marvel at their sudden plainness, Nincompoops with tongs abandon the whole shebang. My stupefaction remains wholly blunt and untamed, That once familiar summer will ripen and destroy all Backward glances aimed at divining an elusive theme,…
Approached each day ready to return Knowing no knowledge in safety — Day eventually discovering day, Nothing is forever new tomorrow. All along songs that need to grow On us spring into action unlocking Stolen loves still too much to bear. An altar of air colors how hard this Is to say — your true…
Movements toward the unexceptional, Benediction of the voice’s mannering Vagrancy expires to tilt at beatific winds Tacking ships into a salty harbor of blood. Let us dispense with muttering receipts From Pentecostal fire in the chimney Where the jackdaw builds its nest of straw For weekend escapes to the empyreal stark. Ghosts zone out upon…
In what world do you think I would say such a thing? We waded through possibilities to absurdity’s shore. In youth, I often ran through fearsome rows of corn. That is not metaphor. Primary trouble rests its case. People were after monuments: Less talk, more rock. A neighbor nearly knifed me open for others to…
1. The Empire of Flora A tossing garden in a rising wind, an air of expectation. And Claire tutoring me on the landscaping: pagoda plants, crotons, a kind of blue ginger; over there, African lilies, bellwethers of spring. When she points me to liriopes, I expect the terrace to be inhabited by a feminine miniature,…
These bareback races are medieval in the modern sense: a bribe, a ruse, the occasional fall, fracture, and a bullet —but also in the sense of a retrieval of standards and emblems, the use of symbol, allegory, amulet, the team colors you cannot refuse. Tomorrow the terracotta dust will plume for about two minutes taking…
1 A girl puked on the tour bus on the switchback up Vesuvius. Her mother looked the other way —out the window. Where else? Wildflowers, hardy and tender, seemed unaware of the perils of flourishing in cinder. We trudged, as through beach sand, and when we got back on, sand had been shoveled onto the…
Two sounds in the house lately: clanking barbells and electric guitar behind garage and bedroom doors. J.’s mesocosm failed; he flagrantly excused himself on the basis of gender, as the gathering of mud and spores, weeds and worms for “nurturing” is not the métier, apparently, of boys. Dear A., I myself was quite taken with…
And that is why I paced the corridors Of those great museums Gazing at paintings of a world In which David is blameless as a boy scout Goliath earns his shameful death While eternal twilight dims Rembrandt’s canvases The twilight of anxiety and attention And I passed from hall to hall Admiring portraits of cynical…
