SPRING
Wind in almond blossoms. Ants on limestone mountains. Cézanne’s bones in red earth. Countless vines on red earth. Black wine on oak tables. They drink love or hate as The old plane trees blossom. They drink coffee or pastis Under the blowing young leaves. Under feathery pines, On red and gray hillsides, Hidden [...]
JUST
after the downpour, in the early evening, late sunlight glinting off the raindrops sliding down the broad backs of the redbud leaves beside the porch, beyond the railing, each leaf bending and springing back and bending again beneath the dripping, between existences, ecstatic, the souls grow mischievous, they break ranks, swerve [...]
FOUR MOUNTAIN POSTURES
Walking in the mountains unconsciously trudging along grab a vine climb another ridge
Standing in the mountains how many dawns become dusk plant a pine a tree of growing shade
Sitting in the mountains zig-zag yellow leaves fall nobody comes close the door and make a big fire
Lying in the [...]
WORDS AND THE DIMINUTION OF ALL THINGS
The brief secrets are still here, and the light has come back. The word remember touches my hand, But I shake it off and watch the turkey buzzards bank and wheel Against the occluded sky. All of the little names sink down, weighted with what [...]
NOVEMBER NIGHT
Listen. . . With faint dry sound, Like steps of passing ghosts, The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees And fall.
— Adelaide Crapsey
IT IS THE TIME OF RAIN AND SNOW
It is the time of rain and snow I spend sleepless nights And watch the frost Frail as your [...]
AUTUMN
Both lying on our sides, making love in spoon position when she’s startled, What’s that? She means the enormous ship passing before you— maybe not that large, is it a freighter
or a passenger ship? But it seems huge in the dark and it’s so close. That’s a poem you say, D. H. [...]
LEAVES
1
Every October it becomes important, no, necessary to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded by leaves turning; it’s not just the symbolism, to confront in the death of the year your death, one blazing farewell appearance, though the irony isn’t lost on you that nature is most seductive when it’s about [...]
MAY DAY
I’ve decided to waste my life again, Like I used to: get drunk on The light in the leaves, find a wall Against which something can happen,
Whatever may have happened Long ago—let a bullet hole echoing The will of an executioner, a crevice In which a love note was hidden,
Be [...]
STILL ON WATER
Solitude closes down around us As we lie passive and exhausted Solitude clamps us softly in its warm hand.
A turtle slips into the water With a faint noise like a breaking bubble; There is no other sound, only the dim Momentous conversation of windless Poplar and sycamore leaves and rarely, [...]
THE SNOW-STORM
ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet Delayed, all friends shut [...]