Flames
Smokey the Bear heads Into the autumn woods With a red can of gasoline And a box of wooden matches. His ranger’s hat is cocked At a disturbing angle. His brown fur gleams Under
The Iron Bridge
I am standing on a disused iron bridge That was erected in 1902, According to the iron plaque bolted into a beam, The year my mother turned one. Imagine a mother in her infancy,
On Turning Ten
The whole idea of it makes me feel Like I’m coming down with something, Something worse than any stomach ache Or the headaches I get from reading in bad light A kind of measles
Dharma
The way the dog trots out the front door Every morning Without a hat or an umbrella, Without any money Or the keys to her doghouse Never fails to fill the saucer of my
I Go Back To The House For A Book
I turn around on the gravel And go back to the house for a book, Something to read at the doctor’s office, And while I am inside, running the finger Of inquisition along a
Silence
Now it is time to say what you have to say. The room is quiet. The whirring fan has been unplugged, And the girl who was tapping A pencil on her desktop has been
Thesaurus
It could be the name of a prehistoric beast That roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up On its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary, Or some lover in a myth who is
I Ask You
What scene would I want to be enveloped in More than this one, An ordinary night at the kitchen table, Floral wallpaper pressing in, White cabinets full of glass, The telephone silent, A pen
Tomes
There is a section in my library for death And another for Irish history, A few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan, And in the center a row of imperturbable reference books,
Child Development
As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs And sauntered off the beaches into forests Working up some irregular verbs for their First conversation, so three-year-old children Enter the phase of name-calling. Every day a
Candle Hat
In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates: Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes, Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness, Rembrant looks relieved as if he
Fishing On The Susquehanna In July
I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna Or on any river for that matter To be perfectly honest. Not in July or any month Have I had the pleasure if it is a
Directions
You know the brick path in the back of the house, The one you see from the kitchen window, The one that bends around the far end of the garden Where all the yellow
Picnic, Lightning
It is possible to be struck by a Meteor or a single-engine plane while Reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians Are flattened by safes falling from Rooftops mostly within the panels of The
For Bartleby The Scrivener
“Every time we get a big gale around here some people just refuse to batten down.” We estimate that Ice skating into a sixty Mile an hour wind, fully exerting The legs and swinging