Poetry
Spring 2005
Gregor Mendel in the Garden
Black-robed on the green hillside, he seems less shape than space—Abbot Napp— a gap in a flock of April lambs. Then wind opens his wide sleeves and the flock scatters—his […]
Poetry
Spring 2005
Terce: Gregor Mendel and Script
Quiet hour, the lamb in the field and now on the page. And the page itself the lamb, fleshside and peltside. Quiet hour, and now on the page the lamb, […]
Poetry
Spring 2005
Sext: Gregor Mendel and the Bells
Forbidden, our two-stroke bells of mourning, our cholera bells of mourning, the toll of their tolling fearsome, we are told, the toll of their tolling despondency. Holy Father, all day […]
Poetry
Spring 2005
Gregor Mendel and the Calico Caps
With tweezers light as a pigeon's beak, I have clipped from each stamen a pollen-filled anther: hour by hour, three hundred tiny beads, dropped in my robe's deep pocket, their […]
Nature's Nature
May/June 2017
Ivory Tightrope Walker
17th c, use unknown Not weathervane, not lightning rod,although the slender figure, balancedon a rooftop wire, might have drawnwhat others called in time ion strikes, their split and re-split […]
Poetry
Autumn 1994
Westray
Then the day passed into the evening, a sovereign, darkening blue. And the twenty-six lost miners, if living at all, knew nothing of the hour: not the languid canter of […]
Poetry
Autumn 1994
Held
Silent, in the loose-fisted grip of evening, he sits with his infant daughter and makes from his face an exaggerated mask, sorrow or glee, shock, the eyebrows launched toward the […]
Poetry
Summer 1991
Audubon’s Border Boy
He is sketching.First the vein and stamen twitch-strokesof the white hydrangea, thumb cocked, three fingers crooked inward-like the cramp an ice ball offers to the freezing hand.Then the push, pull, […]
Poetry
Summer 1991
From Blakesware: Mary Lamb
It is the plum-light of dawn—that flushlike a thumb on the eyelid—and the madness that approaches mecarries two dappled coins: We vacationed in a ghost house. From a flurry like […]