(Written to be read aloud, if so be, Thanksgiving Day)
I remember here by the fire,
In the flickering reds and saffrons,
They came in a ramshackle tub,
Pilgrims in tall hats,
Pilgrims of iron jaws,
Drifting by weeks on beaten seas,
And the random chapters say
They were glad and sang to God.
...Read more

We are even more modern
we are free
not to know
pining pining
til the trees are in
their autumn beauty
who knows why
we are free
left on in the apartment
while I walk my love
to the subway
she turns to gold
in the light banking off
the ball-fields
and to have to ...Read more

If "truth is a fire," as Klimt scrawled on a sketch for his
painting Nuda Veritas, "and to speak truth means to shine and
to burn," then I'm a spent firework, blown-open, hollow, grime-
smeared and left for a wandering child-to pick from
hardened sand, or to wash out to sea. I'm so tired, and tired
of sitting on my ...Read more

I'm home. I'm not home. I'm on the road or
Off it, briefly. I've been out of place. I've been
Taking familiar walks. I like the boardwalk. I like
The swamp. I feel ill at ease. I feel fine.

As August ends, I'm thick and cold. As I circle
Above a tide of cypress knees, of webs,

Fallen trunks and ...Read more

Do not fear.
The garden is yours
And it is yours to gather the fruits
And every flower of every kind,
And to set the high wall about it
And the closed gates.
The gates of your wall no hand shall open,
No feet shall pass,
Through all the days until your return.
Do not fear.

But ...Read more

There where the racecourse is
Delight makes all of the one mind
The riders upon the swift horses
The field that closes in behind.
We too had good attendance once,
Hearers, hearteners of the work,
Aye, horsemen for companions
Before the merchant and the clerk
Breathed on the world with timid breath;...Read more

can be enough to make you look up
at the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the few
that survived the rains and frost, shot
with late afternoon sun. They glow a deep
orange-gold against a blue so sheer, a single bird
would rip it like silk. You may have to break
your heart, but it isn't nothing
to know ...Read more

After Dale's sudden cancer,
his body wasting swiftly to death,
I didn't believe in love or beauty, or my ability to write poems.
And my grieving turned into a sequence of writing
little hostile elegies
in solitary sittings. Elegies ceased being an elegant poetic form. I guess I was trying to ...Read more

I wish I could write a song
to make the world
yield to this rushing

lapping what starts
tonguing what parts
any possible other world than this

inertia for pink medallion
inertia for those skeptics
in the building

who think of the unknown
as hemorrhage-quick stop
...Read more

(Poem on the Occasion of the Centenary of the National Park Service)
The pendulous branches of the Norway spruce slowly move
as though approving our gentle walk in Woodstock,
and the oak leaves yellowing this early morning
fall in the parking lot of Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller.
We hear beneath our feet their susurrus...Read more

for Bill Handley
Pale ash falls from
the sky. On the lanai,
a child finger-paints

a big red sun, twin to
the one that burns
above: mirror on fire.

What does the sun see,
through pages of smoke?
Hills: gargoyles, winged.

The horizon brazen as
the great fool's ...Read more

I
The hard sand breaks,
And the grains of it
Are clear as wine.

Far off over the leagues of it,
The wind,
Playing on the wide shore,
Piles little ridges,
And the great waves
Break over it.

But more than the many-foamed ways
Of the sea,
I know him
Of the ...Read more

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes?
I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, ...Read more

of all the lines of all the subway cars in all of new york city
we walk into the one with a corpse
it just puts everything into prescription for us
as jason stackhouse says

alabaster turning into crystale
nantaa nde telling me unsaddle yr horse
means to take off your hat

I love it when ...Read more

I thought I would write a novel
about the window with its shadow
set in the two-story house.
Cezanne stands at the sunchoke hedge,
alone and licking a brush
among the tree's traces of changing shade.
The woman-I named her
and almost saw her-could be
flapping a pillowcase at the shutter
as ...Read more

Moon that is linking our daughters'
Choices, and still more beginnings,
Threaded alive with our shadows,

These are our bodies' own voices,
Powers of each of our bodies,
Threading, unbroken, begetting

Flowers from each of our bodies.
These are our spiraling borders
Carrying on your ...Read more

-Walking along a ridge of white sand-
it's cooler below the surface-
we stop and, gazing at an expanse
of dunes to the west,
watch a yellow yolk of sun drop to the mountains-

an hour earlier, we rolled down a dune,
white sand flecked your eyelids and hair-

a claret cup cactus blooms,
...Read more

is dark
a neglected mansion
with vanishing court
rats in the empty pool

and antiquated actress
languishing

as ghost of her famous self
flickers in the projector's beam

or framed in silver
haunts every room

Face unrecognizable?
Name forgotten?

...Read more

I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-night
Under a cloudy moonless sky; and peeped
In at the windows, watched my friends at table,
Or playing cards, or standing in the doorway,
Or coming out into the darkness. Still
No one could see me.

I would have thought of them
-Heedless, within a week of ...Read more

In the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment
Or broken flesh with one another
At the profane communion table
Where wine is spilled on promiscuous lips

We might have given birth to a butterfly
With the daily news
Printed in blood on its wings.


About This Poem
"Love Songs" was ...Read more