More on: life

The knife was held like night— quiet in her husband’s hand. In silence, the umbilicus was snipped. The moon went on shining. A mare leapt astride a stallion. Jerusalem was drowning. A match dropped. Hay fired. Kings slunk away. The world hung heavy on her breast. —Love’s foundling. A curtain twitched: unholy neighbors. A nosey…

What but poverty earned him your respect that when our fates were turned he is called to act as cruelly as I did then? Lot’s wife turned back in shock, in pity perhaps, and for this she was robbed of flesh and name. Why plant in us the startle and curious glance to countermand that…

Stanley Spencer, 1924–27 Cascading white roses! Their throne arbored shade’s —-“curious scent” Spencer recalled while painting. Those Seven Sisters perfume ——-my heart. God the Father’s broad: solid ————–as a Giotto Madonna, his curve-plane’s not ours. His hand’s in his son’s hair. Christ, free, in his white gown, cradles three babies, one naked, in folds of…

I strive to live as if I were going to die tomorrow. The steady breathing of my sleeping wife, the taste of gherkin, the odor of soil and of dill, of smoke suspended over the fields, the sight of a couple necking on the dunes —that’s too much. They say that every day brings us…

And he sent forth a raven and it went back and forth, to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. —Genesis 8:7 To traverse open water searching for signs of life, a seabird is more suited than a land bird, which needs the trustworthy stubble of wheat fields and faithful…

She wants to believe he clung to death, that the sweetness of the light that took him soaked him until he was fat with gladness, that bringing him back to the dark cave, making him breathe through oil-soaked cloth, pushing life back into his stiffened fingers and toes, that calling him with a siren’s voice…

THE PHERICHE CLINIC clings to a windswept, rocky plateau two day’s hike below Everest Base Camp. Dwarfed by the majestic Himalayan peaks that surround it, this collection of low stone buildings is the highest medical clinic in the world, offering climbers and those who live there the care and expert treatment that are essential in…

I When my father meets God he says, Let me introduce myself…. When my father meets God he says, Am I too early? Too late? When my father meets God he says, Do you serve drinks here? When my father meets God he says, It was easier not to believe. When my father meets God…

Has birth ever peeled you apart Has birth ever hollowed you out For I have seen a woman being transfigured Into lips her water breaking like the first Ocean spilling between the thighs of creation And then between those lips her firstborn crowning Like a tongue that dips to test the light and scalds Have…

Night girl, your book is full. You have drawn all the pictures. You have seen many weepers. Rainbows held your sky in place, and sorrows bloomed about you like flowers. Moons floated on your lakes and washed them. Stars lit your river beds, and songs adorned your chest with garlands. When a bird sings when…