More on: Poetry

I know a woman who, when she hears wise words uttered, turns her palms upward. She’s as likely to place her hands on my shoulders, to comfort. None of it for show. Palms upward, she’s a basin. Palms downward, a wellspring, rain. May we be basin and well to each other. May we be rainlight…

May you die as did that good man William Blake who, shortly before, broke into singing; before that, called his wife an angel and drew her, not just her face, but her whole and spiritual body. Closer to it, he said he would forever be near to care for her. After that, and after the…

The thing about nature is it doesn’t need coaching. Fire flares true, first strike out of a match. Infant waterfalls sing like experts. Acorns squeeze out oaks, each leaf a born breather. Even Darwin’s mutations. Paragons. Every one a prima donna, a first fiddle. _____________So is it not strange— child of nature that I am—to…

All this day: a gift of abstraction. The trees sway with it, murmuring box this up, this fifth day of this fifth month, as if to say, You’ll need it when you’re gaping like a fish for kindness, for this day gave you emptiness and the permission to feed yourself by choosing not to fill…

The anvil prints tails. The hammer, heads. Thirty tons of pressure, and a blank copper disk gets Lincoln and the memorial in one bang. Six billion a year, cut out, stamped, and dumped like Danae’s love shower into a tub. Dearer to make than to own, yet we don’t bother to pick one up let…

the forest will have broken open its green gates to allow me in and I’ll walk through the undergrowth as easily as if there had been a path there though there is nothing but bramble, briar, the scratching blackberry canes how long, I wonder, have you been waiting? I will not know you are there…

On lines from “In Memory of the Spanish Poet Federico Garcia Lorca” by Thomas Merton Where the white bridge rears up its stamping arches Proud as a colt across the clatter of the shallow river, The sharp guitars Have never forgotten your name. I stood up to my knees in the April river and the…

The explosives belt was ticking On his terrified body, And from the wells of his eyes screwed into him That very morning there dripped Farewell tears for Isaac. Soon there are the mountain, altar And cotton-wool faces of the angels. Luckily, a minute before the blast God reminded him there is A God. Translated by…

For Benny Efrat No one expected the horses to remember the Flood. Time’s nail had rusted in the horseshoe when God Let the wet shout go into the world. Since then warriors raced upon their backs, Nations wandered And the wind’s whip snapped a gallop in their legs. I therefore ask my friends in the…

I understand the problem. You make A metaphor to try to heal Something. At its heart is a wound You put there. Write A postcard, send it off—now Believe it will arrive A whole planet away, A lifetime, into another’s hands. Try Not thinking what might go wrong.