Voyages
Pond snipe, bleached pine, rue weed, wart I walk by sedge and brown river rot To where the old lake boats went daily out. All the ships are gone, the gray wharf fallen In
Last Words
If the shoe fell from the other foot Who would hear? If the door Opened onto a pure darkness And it was no dream? If your life Ended the way a book ends With
Ode For Mrs. William Settle
In Lake Forest, a suburb of Chicago, A woman sits at her desk to write Me a letter. She holds a photograph Of me up to the light, one taken 17 years ago in
Berenda Slough
Earth and water without form, Change, or pause: as if the third Day had not come, this calm norm Of chaos denies the Word. One sees only a surface Pocked with rushes, the starved
The Whole Soul
Is it long as a noodle Or fat as an egg? Is it Lumpy like a potato or Ringed like an oak or an Onion and like the onion The same as you go
Detroit Grease Shop Poem
Four bright steel crosses, Universal joints, plucked Out of the burlap sack “the heart of the drive train,” The book says. Stars On Lemon’s wooden palm, Stars that must be capped, Rolled, and anointed,
Then
A solitary apartment house, the last one Before the boulevard ends and a dusty road Winds its slow way out of town. On the third floor Through the dusty windows Karen beholds The elegant
At Bessemer
19 years old and going nowhere, I got a ride to Bessemer and walked The night road toward Birmingham Passing dark groups of men cursing The end of a week like every week. Out
Noon
I bend to the ground To catch Something whispered, Urgent, drifting Across the ditches. The heaviness of Flies stuttering In orbit, dirt Ripening, the sweat Of eggs. There are Small streams The width ofa
Father
The long lines of diesels Groan toward evening Carrying off the breath Of the living. The face of your house Is black, It is your face, black And fire bombed In the first street
Songs
Dawn coming in over the fields Of darkness takes me by surprise And I look up from my solitary road Pleased not to be alone, the birds Now choiring from the orange groves Huddling
Magpiety
You pull over to the shoulder of the two-lane Road and sit for a moment wondering where you were going In such a hurry. The valley is burned out, the oaks Dream day and
In A Vacant House
Someone was calling someone; Now they’ve stopped. Beyond the glass The rose vines quiver as in A light wind, but there is none: I hear nothing. The moments pass, Or seem to pass, and
Salts And Oils
In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog Believing it was Peking duck. Later, In Tampa I bunked with an insane sailor Who kept a.38 Smith and Wesson in his shorts. In the same
Coming Close
Take this quiet woman, she has been Standing before a polishing wheel For over three hours, and she lacks Twenty minutes before she can take A lunch break. Is she a woman? Consider the