More on: Poetry

Once, night floated for ten or twelve seconds
on daybreak, following a sleepless night,
with Lydia, my cat of nineteen years,

in pain from renal failure, beside me….

And what of the tongue
Too long in the silky purse
Of the coveted spot, slurping up
Every pearl?

Every year, I surprise myself 
with how bad I am at most of the things 
I want to be good at: gardening
and happiness, mainly. 

As many times
as the doctors look,

my good breast mirrors back 
nothing but good.

The mountains encircled him
like elders less stern
than his father the pastor
who warned him that whatever
gave him pleasure was a sin,

even sledding…and, later, painting.

I knelt naked in the grotto west of the meditation pool—
the closest in years I’d gotten to belief. Around her feet:

cockle shells, one gold earring, a crochet-covered rock,

Fear not, a voice said.
And out of the voice emerged a figure.
He looked like a man
but we knew he wasn’t.

It isn’t sight or sound or taste I’ve missed
the most—I’d been deprived of each before—
but routine, trusty touch, which we ignore
promiscuously:

First rain in the new house—
walls passed inspection, but
who knows? It’s hard to trust
in bricks. Aren’t they just cut-up

mud, lashed now by spray
from clotted gutters?