Poets’ Corner
Sunscreen
That day we went to Southport without a thought of Time, or Love, or God, or even sunscreen — when it was late July, and we were nineteen, when beer and cigarettes were all we brought, when swimming naked meant the glimpses caught were also offered, when no desire was unclean, when death was in…
Relics
The saint in her stasis reclined there, Preparing to rise, her handlers made clear, On what bailiffs call the Last Great Day When they swear in the witnesses at court. Wouldn’t it be fine to see it happen In the rainy doldrums of a Thursday, The skies finally parting, not for the sun, But the…
CHURCHYARDS
1. I never can see a churchyard old, With its mossy stones and mounds, And green-trees weeping the unforgot That rest in its hallowed bounds ; I never can see the old churchyard, But I breathe to God a prayer, That, sleep as I may in this fevered life, I may rest when I slumber…
The Garden of Eros is a Watching Place
Variations on a line by Sorina Higgins The Garden of Eden is a waiting room. The waiting of the painted is a still palace. The watching of the pained is an error. The panting of the weaned is a gratitude. The parching of the great is a watershed. The parting of the water is…
Sparks
Sparks flying over beaten metal In the gloom of a smithy; Drops of dew upon a petal In the grandeur of a city; Strike a bell and there is music In the late-spring streets, But there is a sound of pity When the blacksmith beats; The sighs of the lovesick, The sparkling of artificial stars,…
Session
I You were shuttering light With your triggered eye, Locking the cool, humid light Into phosphorescent memory. “As the light gets better,” you said, And commanded the play Of peonies, white tulle, And laughter on the cusp of a cliff. The light got better. And the pines Which bristled endlessly Became something of green and…
Class of ’22
I found a vale of spring at summer’s end Before the trees had changed their green to gold. I plucked the fruit of fall and hiked the path To watch the harvest fire in the cold, To see your faces flicker with the flame Of youth that takes no thought of growing old. I loved…
Coming Home
After six years away, today the sunlight weaves through plum and amber leaves to fend off Boston’s gray. Most things avoid most change; rush hour traffic snarls and honks along the Charles, but pulling in is strange. It’s not repainting by the neighbors, or new faces, or all the gaping spaces where trees had blocked…
He Informs Dew
Anagram of Proverbs 9:10–12, NKJV yellow field yields fine wispy fiber: Your glory ordinary. fatuous gold as wisdom to heathen, woefully fractured— for You off lies. You add beam to leafed wind; I find you in one lone leaf, oh, but arise! be enlightened! say, “Israel bow to the King; He informs dew!”
The Green Man
Shallow there in the shadows, shaded by the laurels, as morning comes on clear and cold as old ice puddles, there where the ragged woodline makes a hedge against the day, a brim, a bound of darkness at the border of the field, he sits in fertile stillness. The slats of the old blind are…