July 1, 1985
A Wingbeat of Hope
Suppose gravity suddenly floated off into space, lifting for the first time the corners of our mouths. Suppose the sky a deep blue pool and we the divers in a […]
July 1, 1985
Recalling a Conversation with My Daughter
When the dark wind blows over rooftops and the song of snow whispers in its most secret breaths that we are all dying, I think of you, child, dying. […]
July 1, 1985
A Yard near Elizabethton, Tennessee
Where Tin Can Hollow Road crosses Minton Road and runs back into the hills, where joe-pye weed guards the established trash, a mound with its dog, its bottles, its cracked, […]
July 1, 1985
The Horses of Morning
The horses of morning illuminate the meadow, ponderous in their steamy breath; their strong teeth, white as lilies of the valley, clip the nubs of hay, clover, wild violet. […]
July 1, 1985
First Kingdom
Where the cross-eyed green-striped tiger Smiles at the blue bear The size of a stuffed woolen sock, We meet, a child, a man, Both wanderers in the first kingdom Where […]
July 1, 1985
If God Permits
God, pretend my soul is not a gypsy. Pretend that ghosts do not cast shadows that blacken the road in front of another man. Do not pretend I am the […]
April 1, 1984
Video Games
In Claude Lorrain, the trees win every time. The violent spots of color are a game. The dragon’s blood, the swordplay on the shore, the embarkation of the fleet across […]
April 1, 1984
Poem
The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, shoulders, and all the rest at night in the black branches, in the morning in the blue branches […]
April 1, 1984
Oak
Even sealed as you were in oak, I wanted you in the living room, the wood that hid your face draped with red roses, hundreds scattering almost to the floor. […]
April 1, 1984
Open Window
Nothing to hold fast to. A strange bird’s song—gold needle, gold thread—slips through its own weaving. It’s as if, eased by the indolence of the day, even words have lost […]
April 1, 1984
Rhythmic Brushwork
A sky, like a canvas, accepts motion. A band Of orange monarchs in migration is drifting now Across that deepening background from the east. There is motion as the butterflies […]
April 1, 1984
A House and a Vein of Water
In the bars that face the pier they always knew.Each night a house lifts free of its foundation,undertakes the long sail. At dawn it returns,nudging awake the still groggy formthat […]