More on: Poetry

The whole city floats beneath our feet. Arched bridges hold it together, we say, lulled into dreams and into each other’s arms, window open to soft lapping. And at dawn a dove coos, two eggs loose on the bare windowsill. We arrived by air in Rome, then the train on rails over wooden posts driven…

When an Iranian Jew tells me that, in the nineties, the man who censored films for the regime was blind— that his assistant, a teenage boy, had to describe to his master every frame that might make imperfect their revolution—I think, of course. What better metaphor could there be to explain such foolishness? How else…

Sleepless, the fish wait ——-for the steer’s head, —————a ceremony they have learned to require—primordial ——-as the filaments of gills —————but honed in this economy of flesh: the apprentice’s arcing ——-heave, the silvery shattering —————of the surface, then, slowly, their prize’s descent. By the time ——-it reaches them, its mute bewilderment —————has relaxed into nothingness,…

is holy, molten in its calcium cup, sun and moon mixed, hot in its prison, cells’ incentive to fuse firing, no second to loiter, calling now to a predator’s jaw. How the genetic vow is kept. Jellied not-yet, hard as thought becoming belief, little o in hope or love, un- umbilical one, cast into air,…

In creased coat, body beggar-curled, colored not the sky blue of Christ’s robe on the mount, nor his mother’s in the manger before she was haloed forever, but a bruising blue, indigo as blood trapped beneath flesh. What the drowned last see, sunk past light’s reach.      

Sentient, it seemed, the snowflakes’ descent, making a midair lake, hovering in the somewhere between weakness and ghost, careless as orchids after Christmas. Beyond the veil of a twelfth-century statue, one congregant took off his Reeboks to pray more ardently in the aisle. The monks were in agreement, voice-wise, with the twilight, the work of…

Under this skylight many lost things are visible. I see the mighty black and yellow spiders in the iris beds by the old garage and feel not a shred of fear. I could husk two dozen sticky ears of sweet corn and pick two quarts of strawberries on my achy knees without whining once. I…

1. When my unemployed faith reappeared as boredom, it seemed a diplomatic triumph. But just about then animals began to intercept me in my wanderings. I grew more and more susceptible to their solicitations. Trees are probably fearless, but the forest should have known better than to show off like that. We had long known…

On the road before sunrise, so none of us were citing Homer, Keats, or Dickinson during the drive to catch my flight. Only after I’d asked did Sean and Jens mention the anaconda they had found once in Sean’s cattle pasture. From time to time someone spotted the height of egret whiteness crossing daybreak’s blaze…

—————–after a painting by John Henry Twachtman Like a gate to Paradise, illumined as how fluttering angels might appear, the meadow seems misty while at the same time impossibly bright. But there looks to be hardly any way into such purity of color, through the many layers of lavender and yellow. And yet a few…