Autumn 1984
The Raft
His father tells himto be careful, to go no fartherthan the agreed-on boundariesof the lily cove. His father reminds him of his mother’s cousin Archiewho fell into the blackboil of […]
Autumn 1984
Cobra
I fear the cobra which the keeperhas teased from its box, which has reared and spreadits hood, hissed, lunged at the keeper’s yellowboots, gathered, struck and gathered. I shudder back […]
Poetry
Autumn 1984
For the Lately Dead
He’s dead: I never wished him that,my single charity. He’s paidfor everything, fought hard, with courage,was, in the horror of his final week, fearful and in pain, from what quite […]
Poetry
Summer 2000
Adam Imagines Moving
One gets used to everything, it’s painful to recognize the skill we have at it what we really desire is to be alive in somebody’s eyes we line up to […]
Poetry
Winter 1993
Dead Pig
Not drunk, but sick from bad fish or fowl or some several other possibilities, in fact almost to dying on the landing in Marseilles, the liberty boat long gone, the […]
Poetry
Winter 1993
Newborn
for Henry Matthew Amistadi The world displayed itself simply enough– there were portents, of course, the mirrors smoky and slow. But I had no choice, I was unpreventable. A minute […]
Poetry
Spring 1989
Moonset
At moonset the stars flung themselves apart from one another, the frogs that had rejoiced all night from the river’s edge fell silent, and in the deep mulch of shadow […]
Poetry
Spring 1989
Poem on My Birthday
I At times in the night the lips of the continents collide and rise and then withdraw, leaving halved spirals of nautiloids, sheared corals, the raw hole opening as in […]
Poetry
Spring 1989
Black Dog
Just before dawn the yard is empty, no sign anything had prowled there all night under my window, loll-tongued and grinning, in and out of the long shadows, any time […]
Poetry
Spring 1989
Brooding Duck
Five weeks on her infertile eggs brooded the Rouen hen, and they turned blue, then black, then purely stank.At first, given to pity and the brute shadow of blood between […]
Poetry
Autumn 1984
The Pool at Sunrise
A short time ago, without warning and unwilled by us, the garden began to waver between green and grey, faster and faster, until — trying to accept what light there […]