Marvin Bell
I, or Someone Like Me
In a wilderness, in some orchestral swing Through trees, with a wind playing all the high notes, And the prospect of a string bass inside the wood, I, or someone like me, had a
The Self and the Mulberry
I wanted to see the self, so I looked at the mulberry. It had no trouble accepting its limits, Yet defining and redefining a small area So that any shape was possible, any movement.
He Said To
crawl toward the machine guns Except to freeze For explosions and flares. It was still ninety degrees At night in North Carolina, August, rain and all. The tracer bullets wanted Our asses, which we
Life
I leave the office, take the stairs, In time to mail a letter Before 3 in the afternoon the last dispatch. The red, white and blue air mail Falls past the slot for foreign
These Green-Going-to-Yellow
This year, I’m raising the emotional ante, Putting my face In the leaves to be stepped on, Seeing myself among them, that is; That is, likening Leaf-vein to artery, leaf to flesh, The passage
To Dorothy
You are not beautiful, exactly. You are beautiful, inexactly. You let a weed grow by the mulberry And a mulberry grow by the house. So close, in the personal quiet Of a windy night,
Wednesday
Gray rainwater lay on the grass in the late afternoon. The carp lay on the bottom, resting, while dusk took shape In the form of the first stirrings of his hunger, And the trees,