Poetry
-For Cecilia A spirited play for words, like a December wind punching your breath Back down through your esophagus; a resolute sense of commitment Like the bold disregard maple, chicory, and sumac pay at summer’s …
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree, Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes – Some have got broken – and carrying them up to the attic. The holly and …
Toward the Winter Solstice Although the roof is just a story high, It dizzies me a little to look down. I lariat-twirl the rope of Christmas lights And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown; …
The Past The form of the poem subsided, it enters another poem. A witness was found for the markings inscribed upside-down. It might have been a celebration, so strong the presence of the poem. The …
December Sonnet At evening jugglers travel through the forest On quaint wagons, small steeds. A golden stash seems locked in clouds. In the dark plain villages are painted. The red wind billows linen black and …
Mortal Limit I saw the hawk ride updraft in the sunset over Wyoming. It rose from coniferous darkness, past gray jags Of mercilessness, past whiteness, into the gloaming Of dream-spectral light above the lazy purity …
Censored Into a crock of gold he’d set some weeds, Behold swart devils in the sunniest weather; He would lump the saint and the courtesan together, Most miserably jangling all the creeds. The prurient multitude …
The Antique Harvesters Tawny are the leaves turned but they still hold, And it is harvest; what shall this land produce? A meager hill of kernels, a runnel of juice; Declension looks from our land, …
Aeneas at Washington I myself saw furious with blood Neoptolemus, at his side the black Atridae, Hecuba and the hundred daughters, Priam Cut down, his filth drenching the holy fires. In that extremity I bore …
The Third Station The First Fall I must recover from this fall. No other Savior can be found. I will redeem the sins of all, So must recover from this fall. I still can hear …
The Problem of Anxiety Fifty years have passed since I started living in those dark towns I was telling you about. Well, not much has changed. I still can’t figure out how to get from …
Emperor Shirikawa Of the six fundamental disciplines, the observance of the commandments is considered the most important; of the ten commandments, the prohibition on the taking of life is the prime one. All living creatures …
Yesterday Down at the Canal You say that everything is very simple and interesting it makes me feel very wistful, like reading a great Russian novel does i am terribly bored sometimes it is like …
Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams 1 I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer. I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing …
October Books litter the bed, leaves the lawn. It lightly rains. Fall has come: unpatterned, in the shedding leaves. The maples ripen. Apples come home crisp in bags. This pear tastes good. It rains lightly …
I Slept, and Dreamed that Life was Beauty I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty; I woke, and found that life was Duty. Was thy dream then a shadowy lie? Toil on, sad heart, …