Here I am— / of two minds: all eyes—all ears—for an echo. /                          ...

In this morning of cardinals / the neighbor's cattle low / and a dog—who knows its master?— / wails like a penitent awakened / not from nightmare, but just another / night's dream. / The cardinals are constant. / Warblers intermittent. Woodpecker / a surprise, each drumming new / and unexpected. Behind this, / every few minutes, a dove coos. / All of this seems...

The actor playing Claudius has worn / the same shirt to rehearsal every night, / a faded royal blue polo with torn / sleeves and grayed message: Ophelia Was Right. / The student of divinity who plays / Laertes has stopped seeking his inner / hothead. He's come to believe the boy stays / calm and affects rage...

The dishes washed, the plates stacked / Neatly in their cupboards, he scooped up a section / Of the Sunday paper and slipped into the lounge, / His belt stretched around a second slice of cake. / He dozed off over the picture of a scoring hero / And came to again at four, the house quiet,...

As long as I struggle to float above the ground / and fail, there is reason for this poetry. / On the stone back of Ludovici's throne, Venus / is rising from the water. Her face and arms / are raised, and the two women trained in the ways / of the world help her rise,...

The shadow of a grass blade falls upon the worm. / A blue-tailed skink slips in under the door. / This is life as lived on a southern farm / with fruit trees (apple orchard; fig and pear). / Scarlet tanagers let themselves be seen / from time to time. Rabbits and deer devour / the season's garden. Bees...

The grass hummocks are like pillows / where I lay my head down, / hear the green calls of lambs / around me on the hillside. / This stone house: a cradle, / balanced on green hill-waves. / Pretensions of the wind / to steal it all away: / the cloud, pillow, rooftop, house wall. / I plunge, I follow...

It's possible for birds to sew /     the air between two feeders, / one hanging in the box elder, /     the other in the elm. Finches / and sparrows flit to the end /     of their line and return, the way / moving the typewriter carriage used...

I knew anger was a seven deadly sin because I knew her. / Rage filled the house, lifted the curtains, fell asleep in the food, / Woke up in the squealing tires of the car / While I lived in my soundproof booth. /        ~ / When the helping starts, the forgive, please...

A man said: / I can't live / and he lived long and meticulously / then he stood still and said: / but I can't love / and he loved women and peace /                                    and unspoken shyness / and an angel fought...

If it was good enough for Eliot to write about, / I guess it's good enough for me, although I only / Lived there for a year, on Dudley Street / At first, across from the trackless trolley yard. / It didn't suit my fantasies at all—the drab apartment / And my two unlikely roommates: Dan,...

The woman let off Death Row walked through a gorge / of chaotic limestone left by meltwater / and saw men everywhere climbing / steep and overhung sides, feet flexed in thin shoes, toeing / crevice after crevice. Hands pryed / the split crag for brokenness. / They hung, worked out each nodule of rock, rejecting / the frailty...

To contemplate quiet, / start with the first marriage / of sound and image: / seventeen seconds of film /       in which two men are dancing / to the wheedling strains of a violin. / One steadies the other /       and turns him toward the light. / They hold each other's waists, / struggling...

Mindless, the tide insists that the body / continue to move ever so slightly / in the spot where it wedged on the rocks. / The wear of water hasn't softened its sheer. / Its wings, unbroken, stay tucked to its sides. / And its webbed feet are stretched and spread / as if sometime in the storm last night / —overwhelmed...

On the walk to school you have stopped / at the one significant lamppost, just to be sure / —if you're late where's the harm— / and are tracing the cut of the maker's name in raised print / and yes, you are certain it is still ticking, / softly ticking where it stands on the...

They've been handing out pamphlets in Leicester Square / (for 'Leicester' read 'Worcester') / ever since our latest victory / (for 'victory' read 'disaster') / and all the penguins in Worcester Square / (for 'penguins' read 'pigeons') / have, like dodos, forgotten how to fly / (for 'fly' read 'do long division') / and are flocking around the annoyed Admiral...

At Mt. Lebanon Cemetery snow / covered the stones. Footprints / told their familiar story over and over. / This afternoon we stood / in half circles holding hands / like strings of paper silhouettes unfolded. / In the parking lot, cars would come and go, / unsettling the melting snow that puddles now. / Over the newest graves / the earth,...

Come sweet lemon come away, / The grove cannot enfold us. / Let's bleach the whisper from the sky. / Let luscious winds embalm us, / No trace of us but wafts away, / Before the fragrant morning! / Come sweet lemon come away, / Before the fragrant morning / Sucks in its cheeks that bid us stay / Below the citrus...

through Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, for / the idea of open road, how it makes of the world / a camera lucida—a timeless, illuminated room. / The psalmist felt this shine, wrote the womb / of the morning, wrote the mountains skipped like rams, / and the little hills like lambs. David Copperfield / begins tenderly, his voice earnest...

Trace this portrait / as it strobes / to the screen: / bone-flecks / out of Longview, / Texas by way of / Palo Alto, Los / Angeles, assembling / an incisor above / an upcurved / too-red rim: / bit by flickering / bit: a smile, / overbite / on a filter- / tip, the upper / lip lagging / milliseconds / in Houston: / pupils between / Oakhurst and / Lisle: an iris, / flash-lit, dim- / inished pine- / green now west / of the stockyards: / veins in Des Moines / meshing / to...

How long, he says, does it take, he says, / to drive? Four days, I say, seven states. / I always liked, he says, a drive, he says, / his every sentence incised by commas / of air begged off thin blue tubes. Once, we / drove, he says, to Florida. So many, / so many, dead deer, but...

I drowned in sleep. / And once my lungs were gills, / I watched my liquid shadow, /          fathoms deep, / Weave through a trembling warp /          of light and hope /          a weft that kills. / No working hand / Had...

Finally, we all arise from seed celestial, / Because the same sky overhead is father of us all. / From him our nurturing mother, Earth, receives the rain's moist drops, / And gravid, she brings forth the joyful trees and gleaming crops, / And the human race as well, and every stripe of wild beast, / Since...

I figured that Chandler's Valley was a real place / but I didn't need to know where, / it was just some place with apple trees, / in America, of course, / but when it went on / "redder for what happened there" / a chill went up my spine / well maybe not a chill / but...

I am a prodigy of despair. / In the womb I wailed the maternal night away, / gurgling like a monkfish under water. / My Francophile parents nicknamed me "Triste," / although my schoolmates called me "Killjoy." / At age ten I wrote a book of epigrams / titled Despond: A Slough. / Sample: "Time teaches us that happiness is...

Hands, the fit of them, to the neck. God's making / an end for the arm, murder, His, forgive me, my / pronoun, my rage, if in practice I lift them / to the window, morning's jet mirror, who, and what / you did, the cracked bell within, is not evil, but to ring it / is ...

You planted cabbages to please me, / I know. / And there the last three or four of them clung / like pock-marked green moons in orbit / across the muddy sky of the garden slope. / We had to get out the hatchet / to chop the woody stem off the one I wanted. / And then I pulled...

The schools always close, knowing / we're so country / all our boys will skip anyway, / and the valley rises together before dawn— / daughters pulling wool caps / past fathers' ears, reciting the profound / and elemental list: / rifle, rounds, knife, rope, / only to send each heavy man to the woods / where he'll slump the day in drifts...

Dead flies on the windowsills, the corpses now / of more than one summer, weightless but unstirred, / on the third story at the top of the stairs. / Impossible for her to climb them now. / Too much tiredness. But she will still / go there again some day, she promises. / Will rest the bucket and sponge...

The woman across the hall / is dying. She talks herself into death / with a low rapid jumble. / A rich African voice is talking / over hers. It speaks of green, / as in pastures; still, as in waters. / A high clamor of geese falls / through the dusk, taking a flock south. / Geese are gone. And...

Like when Stanley Turner / would line up his combat boots / with the curb, / the dull leather tip / would have to be / just on the edge. / He'd stand there / for hours / on this end / of his own haven, / come rain or the rest, / at the edge of the curb / impervious to exhaust fumes,...

I scrape mold from a block of cheddar, / whittle it down to a stalk, / peeling the green shavings into the sink. / My mother is smaller than ever / in her turquoise rubber clogs, / pegged pants and sleeveless shirt, / yet she looms like a heat moon / rising over the overpass in August, / legendary...

I ran in a field of wildflowers, /             waving a butterfly net, three /                          yards of gauzy fabric stitched /                          to the...

They took the journey they'd talked about, / a Sunday drive on Tuesday. / They took lunch, took pictures, / took pleasure shaking their heads / when either lifted to light / the moth-flutter of / a neighbor's forgotten name, / wondering whatever happened / to her, to him, / the stories they'd fled. / The past looked almost comical and frail, / in need of...

1 / Sometimes they are pears. / At other times, sirens in a basket. / And, not so often, violins / one tunes with a stem. / 2 / Pears hold their heads up high, / they have cello-shaped waists and curvy hips. / Buddha adapted their way of sitting / in order to reside inside nothingness. / 3 / The pears are dressed in a green...