More on: Poetry

Here, in the face of the made, Abandon me. In the dark Where firelight licks Stone walls, begin. I draw My spear and take most Careful aim. Draw the buck The spear is looking for. What if it’s all In my head? I can carry The whole mountain there, The striped cat stalking My shadow.…

His voice nearly gone _________________(add enough water and pigment thins) she’s listening to the plainsong of doves in the garden, ______________________their__ you__ you __you calling her slowly back to herself until she’s jarred by laughter coming from ______________________________who is it below her window facing the avenue du Général Baron Robert? Footsteps. Three knocks at the…

The night of the Perseid shower, thick fog descended but I would not be denied. I had put the children to bed, knelt with them, and later in the quiet kitchen as tall red candles burned on the table between us, I’d listened to my wife’s sweet imprecations, her entreaties to see a physician. But…

from the Colloquy of Aelfric (955–c. 1010) i. Fisherman Master: Would you catch a whale? Fisherman: No. Master: Why? Fisherman: Because it is a dangerous thing to catch a whale. How do you catch a whale? No net you could knit is large enough to contain it, no hook you fashion strong enough to tug…

Whether we have slept through Matins’ dream offices or lain awake, we rise to a morning bell we do not call Lauds, and not calling it ablution, we, for the day’s offices, flush dust and dead skin from our many creases. On the highway and through the parking garage to a computer pinging with the…

In the garden of the Hesperides, where the golden apples grew, Orpheus caressed strings that out-sang the sirens, charmed hell, and softened the heart of Death. The hills crept close to listen, and marvelous trees, full of dumbstruck birds, bent toward him. —————The great crowd too bent forward, tense. Keepers stabbed torches into the starved…

after a photograph by Gordon Parks Of all his portraits of elderlies waiting on the mercy of their Master, this is most bitter by far once our mind pans away from some few pleasant, long ago moments we fancy the wallpaper’s many morning glories having seen, and down to our penultimate mystery captured by values…

Valle de Viñales, Cuba, 2002 In this valley where limestone hills jut out like hairy moles over furrows of tobacco, a rock-face Christ sprawls on a skew cross, as if a child had taken loose chert to etch his fanged mouth, stick legs, twigged fingers. I touch gouged eyes that weep candle wax, caress his…

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. I think of that line again as blossoms blow with rain. Beyond the orchard someone sings. Birds cant their heads to ask if this is the tree they remember, if the refugee finds refuge, truly. Steam rises off the pond; or is it a cordite fog,…

The Psalmist said, “Lord, how shall I not call thy name?” The hills were green with his wonder and the birds flew filled with singing, so he sang, “Lord, how shall I not know thee upon the mountain when thy sheep are the great stars of heaven, thy horn the sun and moon, and all…