More on: Poetry

As he raises my bookshelf, empty now, and therefore heavy with what I do not know, my friend the carpenter speaks so kindly of all the dark acolytes of one god who walk the streets of ground zero in fear, beneath the shadows and mistrust that pour down the highest places like waterfalls of dust.…

———-Looked for her in the unseen—in the play of air ———-against the edge of ———-what appeared to be— a child’s laugh in a neighbor ———-yard could recall her, ———-only to call her back into what had passed—sought ———-her in dreams, but she ———-waited at one side in the not to be dreamed of ———-yet, neither…

———Then will I carry you within me for as long ———as I can: not a ———consolation but a promise, and not because ———I must: not as you ———carried me but to be your keeper, a place where ———you remain the one ———bearing life: not as a god or idol that I ———have made too small,…

Hiking in Switzerland with a bad back and doctor’s orders not to fall, through meadows of bluebells and buttercups, daisies and tiny orchids of pale lavender, tiger-striped mossy rocks, forget-me-nots, even the thistles tender in their bristly buds. But danger lurks in beauty of the shining rock slippery with summer melt when here the trail…

The Eighth Day after Creation Then what a falling-off there was, unruly man, a violent God— when earth gave way, and rocks sprang up, volcanoes poured their fire down and mountains rose with jagged crags to form a world outside the plot. Though here today among the glaciered peaks pine stems still grow straight up…

for my father Having pictured the soul as a kind of private moon that hovered invisibly above a person’s shoulder, when my mother said a man and woman’s love for one another could bring their child’s soul down from heaven to be born, I saw it as a cloud-like orb slipping down from the vicinity…

An unexpected reflection of myself in a passing window glances this way then after a quick double-take recognizes me. Like me, she’s caught by surprise; no time for the split second preparations that tend to precede looking in a mirror, or to hide the disappointment in her eyes, her sense that had we met incognito…

Understand the light, then, and recognize it ————————–—Corpus Hermeticum ——————–Memory is a kind of accomplishment ————————William Carlos Williams I Birdsong on the book page, birdsong on the brown rug; fanfare of birdsong above the radio orchestra; birdsong in shafted light of the wooden blinds. In one moment I heard them—by which I mean they’d all…

John 18:38 Pilate questioned Jesus. Jesus questioned back. Pilate questioned him again— The cool Socratic tack. Their repartee was candid, A pointed give-and-take. It was not clear if its last word Was freely willed or fated. When Jesus chose to answer And give the reason why, Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” § Enough about…

We frequent the one where there will be the auctioneer who is predisposed toward hats, who is wearing a red fez tonight while I am not bidding on the stuffed mink cemented to a wooden board, or the colorful antique lard can. I never buy anything except nachos in the back which is when the…