Author: Mark Doty

“I’ve been having these Awful dreams, each a little different, Though the core’s the same- We’re walking in a field, […]

Glassmakers, At century’s end, Compounded metallic lusters In reference To natural sheens (dragonfly And beetle wings, Marbled light on kerosene) […]

You weren’t well or really ill yet either; Just a little tired, your handsomeness Tinged by grief or anticipation, which […]

Over the terminal, the arms and chest of the god Brightened by snow. Formerly mercury, formerly silver, Surface yellowed by […]

Under Grand Central’s tattered vault maybe half a dozen electric stars still lit One saxophone blew, and a sheer black […]

The priest never used blueprints, but worked all The many designs out of his head. Father Wilerus, Transplanted Alsatian, Built […]

They lie in parallel rows, On ice, head to tail, Each a foot of luminosity Barred with black bands, Which […]

The intact facade’s now almost black In the rain; all day they’ve torn at the back Of the building, “the […]

Long Pont’s apparitional This warm spring morning, The strand a blur of sandy light, And the square white Of the […]

Because she could find no one else to paint a picture of the old family place where she and her […]

Not, exactly, green: Closer to bronze Preserved in kind brine, Something retrieved From a Greco-Roman wreck, Patinated and oddly Muscular. […]

Today the Masons are auctioning Their discarded pomp: a trunk of turbans, Gemmed and ostrich-plumed, and operetta costumes Labeled inside […]

This salt-stain spot Marks the place where men Lay down their heads, Back to the bench, And hoist nothing That […]

My salt marsh -mine, I call it, because These day-hammered fields Of dazzled horizontals Undulate, summers, Inside me and out- […]

When I heard he had entered the harbor, And circled the wharf for days, I expected the worst: shallow water, […]

Because the road to our house Is a back road, meadowlands punctuated By gravel quarry and lumberyard, There are unexpected […]