Hung up on
my hearing
and deep in whose
playbook
one too many
nights and never
a black-out
Doing the best
I can, only a man
It hurts me too
Blues in the night
Verlaine Blues
sitting here thinking
a blues for Anne
(all nerves)
and mine
the most ...Read more

To have a thought, there must be an object-
the field is empty, sloshed with gold, a hayfield thick
with sunshine. There must be an object so land
a man there, solid on his feet, on solid ground, in
a field fully flooded, enough light to see him clearly,

the light on his skin and bouncing off his skin.
...Read more

Remember judge and you shall
Be judged
For laughing in school, for being
Stupid and always wrong.
Penance like the scent of the sheep
Is slow O' weary, its coat
A kind of fluff that goes up
In filament theory.
Your own life ahead follows you
Like a scientist posing as a shepherd.
<...Read more

I thought that there were two
The good voice
And my voice

I thought the good voice was buried
And I would have to go
Under my voice
Which is glittery and cold
To get there

Then I heard them
A drumbeat and hawks
Also snakes
Many wild voices

...Read more

The wars are everywhere, o even within.
Drawn in poor bee by the dance loud hum
Of some other tribe, poor bee. Even the center, even the heart,
Keeps a sting sharp: art stings thought, thought stings art.
Petty realm of the long known. Are there other ways to learn to sing?
Clash of long dead ...Read more

If I had loved you, soon, ah, soon I had lost you.
Had I been kind you had kissed me and gone your faithless way.
The kiss that I would not give is the kiss that your lips are holding:
Now you are mine forever, because of all I have cost you.

You think that you are free and have given over your ...Read more

Devoutly worshipping the oak
Wherein the barred owl stares,
The little feathered forest folk
Are praying sleepy prayers.

Praying the summer to be long
And drowsy to the end,
And daily full of sun and song,
That broken hopes may mend.

Praying the golden age to stay
Until the whip-poor-will
...Read more

Weir, Mississippi, 1984

Sara Ross,
Great and Grand-mother of all
rooted things waits on the family porch.
We make our way back to her beginnings.

Six daughters gather space and time
in a small kitchen.
Recipes as old as the cauldron
and aprons wrap around these daughters;
...Read more

Pent up
in a narrow

compass
and shortened

on every side
by the neigh-

borhood
of walls



These veterans
of future wars

handing out
the PTSD

brieflets
before

the mess
to come


*


Were verbing
swerved
<...Read more

in memory of Jean Blecker Levin

Not a trace, those days, not a sign
On a map of where you were from,
That farm greener than green

Rolling hills, hay high as a barn
Under skies without end, joy
Rolling too, the way it used to.

Now that you're gone,
The name of the place reappears.

*

Not a map in the world
...Read more

If I wasn't such a deadbeat, I'd learn Greek.
I wouldn't write sonnets; I'd write epics
and odes. I'd love a man who was
acceptable and conformed to every code.
I'd put together my desk and write my epic or ode
at sunset over my suburb. How I would love my shrubs!
But all I do is listen to country (and the ...Read more

Then we are in the back seat of a car kissing
not the light kind but one where our
hands are on each other's cheeks holding
each other's heads as if they will fall

off why does so much love come at the beginning
then disappear then once again at the moment
before death why can't the same kind exist
in ...Read more

I have known hours built like cities,
House on grey house, with streets between
That lead to straggling roads and trail off,
Forgotten in a field of green;

Hours made like mountains lifting
White crests out of the fog and rain,
And woven of forbidden music-
Hours eternal in ...Read more

Behold me, in my chiffon, gauze, and tinsel, Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight, And into the shadow again, without a whisper!- Firefly's my name, I am evanescent.

Firefly's your name. You are evanescent. But I follow you as remorselessly as darkness, And shut you in and enclose you, at last, and always, Till you are lost,-as a ...Read more

Loudell, in a loose cotton dress
the color of delphiniums,
her hair, owl-feathered and quiet
as her naked toes in their pale sandals
is a friend from this harvest part
of our lives,
a Minerva woman
of herbs and salsas, hellebore, trumpet vines
and heirloom tomatoes. She glides
among us all,<...Read more

Posters for the missing kapok tree appear on streetlights offering a reward for its safe return. I hate to spoil it,

but the end of every biography is death. The end of a city in the rainforest is a legend and a lost expedition. The end

of mythology is forgetfulness, placing gifts in the hole where the worshipped tree should be. But my memory...Read more

The sun rears her unlikely head
In this late spring,
I walk past rubber black boots decorated
With brightly colored umbrellas
In a useless attempt to block the rain.

Up the subway to 14th street
Around the corner to 12th
I climb to the tenth or the eighth floor
Depending on your bodily condition.

I ...Read more

This well-used little bag is just the right size

to carry a copy of the Psalms. Its plain-woven

flowers and helicopter share the sky with bombs

falling like turnips-he who makes light of other

men will be killed by a turnip. A bachelor,

I wear it across my shoulder-it's easier to be

a bachelor all my life than a widow for a day.

On the ...Read more

How I loved
each bare floor, each
naked wall, the shadows on

newly empty halls.
By day, my head humming
to itself of dreams, I cleaned and

scrubbed
to make life
new; dislodging from the corner,

the old
moths and cicadas
pinned to the screen, the carcasses

of grasshoppers
dangling from ...Read more

Oh! we love all the French, and we speak in French
As along through France we go.
But the moments to us that are keen and sweet
Are the ones when our khaki boys we meet,
Stalwart and handsome and trim and neat;
And we call to them-'Boys, hello!'
'Hello, American boys,
Luck to you, and life's best joys!<...Read more