Dead Letter Office


They say a scrivener
went mad from years of working
in the dead letter office,
that undelivered love letter,
broken hearts; the bank note,
a starving child; those...

Letter to My Great, Great Grandchild
after Matthew Olzmann


Oh button, don’t go thinking we loved pianos
more than elephants, air conditioning more than air.
We loved...

Don’t Speak in the Abstract

Say rather:
It’s a nice day.
Pass the mashed potatoes, please.
Look, there’s a chickadee.
Your voice made me swoon.
Let’s plant the beans.
I miss my dead mother...

God Letter


Do I have to dress up or can I wear jeans? Dear Joaquin,

casual Sunday is a plus! Can a woman be fully present in heels?

Remember the other day at the shops, we saw the T-shirt...

Read Three Times & Call Me in the Morning

Command yourself
to read a poem
three times
at each single session
to understand how much
it can offer you and
other readers over time
Notice...

singularity


(after Marie Howe)


in the wordless beginning
iguana & myrrh
magma & reef ghost moth
& the cordyceps tickling its nerves

Buddhist New Year Song

I saw you in green velvet, wide full sleeves
seated in front of a fireplace, our house
made somehow more gracious, and you said
“There are stars in your hair”— it was...

Oil
soft rainsqualls on the swells
south of the Bonins, late at night. Light
from the empty mess-hall
throws back bulky shadows
of winch and fairlead
over the slanting fantail where I stand....

A Portable Paradise


And if I speak of Paradise,
then I’m speaking of my grandmother
who told me to carry it always
on my person, concealed, so
no one else would know but me.
That way they...

Savages

They buy poetry like gang members
buy guns — for aperture, caliber,
heft and defense. They sit on the floor
in the stacks, thumbing through Keats
and Plath, Levine and Olds, four boys...

The swan does not care
if I think
it is beautiful.
The platypus is indifferent
to my laugh or scorn.


My great granddaughter--
"great" "grand" "daughter"--
what an odd and awe

October 2020

I don’t wish to dwell
on the oppressive heat, incessant smoke, and
uncertainty about whether to hang clothes in the closet, or
stuff them into a suitcase

Words can’t begin ...

Autumn Passage




On suffering, which is real.
On the mouth that never closes,
the air that dries the mouth.

At the Window

I was at the window
when a fly near the latch
was on its back spinning—
legs furious, going nowhere.

I thought to swat it
but something in its struggle
was too much my own.

Blessing the Bones

Mist curls through bushes and trees,
veils a woman on her knees to a river
that carries her words to the sea.
Eyes flashing like a wild dark night,
she speaks with the...

Sad

Trust.
Winter will be lovely this year,
Glorious, even.
Rain will soothe,
Winds excite,
And the dark ends of days will lead to unexplored,
Interior caverns, still and vast.

The Lesson Of The Falling Leaves


the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves

Late Night Prayer


Within this silence may a true voice dawn
as smoothly as the heron flies,
the wings unfold from that slender silhouette
and a great power is unfurled.
This still form can...

Autumnal


after a line from William Stafford


When the leaves are about to yellow and fall
ask me then how I tried to hold on to what was green,
how I thought perhaps I was different,
how...

And Will They Ever Com


And will they ever come, days of forgiveness and grace,
when you’ll walk in the fields, simple wanderer,
and your bare soles will be caressed by the clover,
or the...

October Salmon


He’s lying in poor water, a yard or so depth of poor safety,
Maybe only two feet under the no-protection of an outleaning
small oak,
Half-under a tangle of brambles.


After...

Harvest


It’s autumn in the market—
not wise anymore to buy tomatoes.
They’re beautiful still on the outside,
some perfectly round and red, the rare varieties
misshapen, individual, like...

Election

I voted.

I voted for the rainbow.

I voted for the cry of a loon.

I voted for my grandfather’s bones
that feed beetles now.

Daily Acts For the Foreseeable Present

There still are some simple truths.
The sun does rise, so to speak,
Surrounded each day by a greater or lesser
Intensity of color! It does still set...

The Big Picture



I try to look at the big picture.
The sun, ardent tongue
licking us like a mother besotted


with her new cub, will wear itself out.

On Taking the Measure of Your Book


for Michael Franco

there must be a way
to enter your poetry
the way your words turn
into meaning after meaning
into the depths of memory

I keep thinking
of the madrone leaves
that crackle with a hush
when they are hit with first sunlight
on the hillside at the place
I call
Celebration Bend

and the way that our
community

Called By The Fire



Called by fire blazing in leaves,
wandering like Aengus into the beauty,
ambling a dappled circle,
tracing the cycle of my life.

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,
On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798



Five years have past; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters!...

Fall




Fall, falling, fallen. That's the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery...

She Holds These Truths

Throngs of mourners gather below the
forty-four steps that ascend to a portico encircled by
Corinthian columns, each of the sixteen a reminder
of the beauty and dignity...

Avot V'Imahot
Initially I resisted, then ultimately embraced their wisdom, their strength. Every day their truth pulsates through me, for they gave me breath.
L’dor V’dor.

For unimageable...

Learning

A piccolo played, then a drum.
Feet began to come - a part of the music. Here comes a horse,
clippety clop, away.

My mother said, "Don't run -
the army is after someone
other...

Equinox


Now is the time of year when bees are wild
and eccentric. They fly fast and in cramped
loop-de-loops, dive-bomb clusters of conversants
in the bright, late-September out-of-doors. ...

I Go Down To The Shore


I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall —
what should I do?...

Eavesdropping on angels


Yesterday, just as Rosh Hashanah was ending,
I managed to slip through the dream time and
heard R.B.G.’s two guardian angels chatting. Said
one: “Oy gevalt, those...

Once Only


almost at the equator
almost at the equinox
exactly at midnight
from a ship
the full

The Book Of Life

The local gossip is of the last hummingbird.
For a moment
at sunset
the tulip poplar
stood wistfully holding its ragged leaves.
The last
or almost the last
sailboat against...

When Great Trees Fall


When great trees fall,50290
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall

How the Land Talks

I am the Keeper of the Mysteries.
What I know is only understood in the imaginal realms, hence I often keep still.
I know why the seasons turn and how truth is not fathomed in...

Winter in Wisconsin


Let me tell you about winter in Wisconsin.
How the sun struggles to make an appearance at all
before it gives up and slinks from the sky,
leaving the school kids to tote...

Control Burn

What the Indians
here
used to do, was,
to burn out the brush every year.
in the woods, up the gorges,
keeping the oak and pine stands
tall and clear
with grasses

A Walk


My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance--


and...

Photograph from September 11


They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.


The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them

Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing

The light along the hills in the morning
comes down slowly, naming the trees
white, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate.
Notice what this poem is...

Waiting for the Fire



Not just the temples, lifting

lotuses out of the tangled trees,

not the moon on cool canals,

September Meditation


I do not know if the seasons remember their history or if the days and
nights by which we count time remember their own passing.
I do not know if the oak tree remembers...

Fire's Pieta



Sitting legs open wide on the black ground
she cradles the burned llama
against the fullness of her body.


An officer with a shotgun

I Think Continually of Those


I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless...

What Work Is

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not...