More on: Poetry

O, I write to you now Lew / Wallace to say that a deal is a deal / is a deal, and that everything is possible / under our eye-squinting American sky.

After the rain, all over the island
wild irises find their throats
open into astonished song.

The wind unshouldering rain,
they huddle into the concave
of the day by windowpane

Upward / movement of us is vain, said Simone / Weil, if it doesn’t come from a downward / movement. Go down to the river. / The counterweight. Down / without talking with father, mother, / brother, sister

The one thing I’m certain you created / is desire, different forms of it, / cut from the same bone far and / / high in the night.

I must take shoes and clothes off and leave them on the bank for nakedness is water’s first language.

What would you give / / to have heaven be the way you imagine, / made of the familiar and welcoming?

We remember how we’d drink with him, and more / than half our gang are dead as he is now.

He feels such an urge to make things mean, / including his mood. He’s had that longing, / drunk or sober, all his life.

Earth stands / on end, listening. / The acid sun turns on / limes green