July 1, 1984
Lacking Sympathy
My father fishes the red sun down, October, a kind of concurrent posture, a live oak living where it likes and falling for no reason. Over the pond the geese […]
July 1, 1984
To Poetry
To the tune of An Die Musik by Schubert How often have I fled your gentle bondage to seek beyond the boundaries of art.You offered more than a discipline of […]
July 1, 1984
Moses
I I rest aboveThis grave mound’s crypt,A date-pit spat from Egypt’s mouth,Unmindful as a dozing babyRiding in its woven basket.If the River runs bloodDoes my dry heart feed it?If the […]
July 1, 1984
Noah
The joke began with his blessing,And I rose, naked and seriousIn the ark of his hand. He showered praise, claimed meHis salvage. Bound with his WordI hounded close friends. My […]
July 1, 1984
Chekhov on the Way to Singapore
This kind of fear is not new to me.One night on the inland trip, I woke to a breeze of dust and mosquitoes.The moon, liquid and turquois, reflected on the […]
July 1, 1984
The Jay
My wife says he simply flew before he had to, late at night. He’d flown onto the porch and, confused, flew into this poem. Stared actually at the pitch that […]
July 1, 1984
Argus, Dreaming
“But Argus now, after nineteen long years, no soonerSaw Odysseus again, than he gave in to fateAnd lay still in the grip of black death.” Odyssey, xvii His stiff hind […]
July 1, 1984
“All at Once His Leprosy Passed”
Luke: 5 I go in satin, contagion touched away, My sores, the stink, long gone, my beggar’s cup, That target for spit, revered, made holy they say Who’d have it […]
July 1, 1984
Here, in the Desolate City
Here, in the desolate city, The tentative hooves of the buck clip the windy streets, And the stubborn spider decorously Laces the lovers’ sheets. The delicate heart-shaken mouse Whisks from […]
July 1, 1984
The Forty-Acre Lot
Clean-handed coon, dimpling the spring,Under the redwood, under the bays,Whisker-deep in maidenhair fern,Does the fence still reel its rusty stringInto the slowly-turning sky?Do the hawks still mow their cloudy plotOver […]
July 1, 1984
Silhouette
Nightwing, you live in coffinsby day, a mortuary scribewriting ads for guiltabstract as leached bone,with words like “perpetual,”“always,” and “everlasting,”words too mineralto risk whole with a lover.To feed your art,you […]
July 1, 1984
Encounters
For My Father I He began to climb the slender tree his weight familiar beneath him as he pulled.Where the waxy leaves grew thin, he could look down over […]