Aubade
By Poetry Issue 103
This silence before
love pulls itself
apart, against
the current of its own
longing, is the most terrible
silence I know.
Countershine
By Essay Issue 103
Of course complicating considerations can occur with the immaterial, too, as you might be into time and gravity but not augury or angels—or you might be into some angels, like the six-winged amber ones, but not the messenger of death.
Read MoreBehemoth
By Poetry Issue 103
When photos of a million horrors
made the papers, a million eyes stopped
and stared, the way a glass of water stares,
and the railcar around it coming to rest.
In the Studio
By Interview Issue 103
I used to ask myself why humans go through sacrifices and insist on creating things that no one asked for or cares about. But not anymore. I realize that, in my case at least, it is simply an instinctive drive to do, and that’s my way of being.
Read MoreAndy Goldsworthy’s Sticks & Stones
By Poetry Issue 102
You are alone naked in a forest, surrounded. Alone, surrounded by a live ossuary of trees, shed twig, spell of oval stone.
Read MoreThe Depths of August
By Poetry Issue 101
I was fire from which air is withheld, a charged element.
Read MoreRiverkeeper
By Poetry Issue 96
Wanting to be that place where inner and outer meet, this morning I’m listening to the river inside, also to the river out the window, river of sun and branch shadow, muskrat and mallard, heron, and the rattled cry of the kingfisher. Out there is a tree whose roots the river has washed so often…
Read MoreO Men
By Poetry Issue 95
the white-haired child is there, upright in the mire a son of Adam seeking the orient within seeing himself in the eyes of the pack that combs the countryside, spurred on by brass horns his fortune has no bounds he pores over matter which unnerves his world especially the timid ones striding on ibis legs,…
Read MoreMay My Right Hand Forget Me
By Poetry Issue 95
when somebody knocks on my door it’s God asking for shelter make yourself at home and recite for me please a sacred song from your native land you who live in exile in the West and the wistful lines of your ancient poem in what language do you speak to mortals in groves we’re promised…
Read MoreSpring Begetting
By Poetry Issue 92
My one-year-old grandson John has climbed up on the couch where I have been reading Updike, and, standing, looks out the window to the lilacs where a catbird spills itself in long bursts of toowees, cluks, whooits and meows and now he, too, finds his way to runs of throaty vowels and a comedic tumble…
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