Just as the sun was setting
Back of the Western hills
Grandfather stood by the window
Eating the last of his pills.

And Grandmother, by the cupboard,
Knitting, heard him say:
“I ought to have went to the village
To fetch some more pills... (Read full poem)

The Mountain sat upon the Plain
In his tremendous Chair --
His observation omnifold,
His inquest, everywhere --

The Seasons played around his knees
Like Children round a sire --
Grandfather of the Days is He
Of Dawn, the Ancestor --(Read full poem)

"What will you do when you come to die,
If all your life long you have rejected Jesus,
And know as you lie there, He is not your friend?"
Over and over I said, I, the revivalist.
Ah, yes! but there are friends and friends.
And blessed are... (Read full poem)

Praise the good-tempered summer
and the red cardinal
that jumps
like a hot coal off the track.
Praise the heavy leaves,
heroines of green, frosted
with silver.  Praise the litter
of torn paper, mulch
and sticks, the spiny holly,
its scarlet land... (Read full poem)

To grow old is to lose everything. 
Aging, everybody knows it. 
Even when we are young, 
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads 
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer 
pond, ignorant and content. But a... (Read full poem)

Along the strand stones, 
busted shells, wood scraps, 
bottle tops, dimpled 
and stainless beer cans. 
Something began here 
a century ago, 
a nameless disaster, 
perhaps a voyage 
to the lost continent 
where I was born. 
Now the cold winds 
of... (Read full poem)

Sing me a thrush, bone. 
Sing me a nest of cup and pestle. 
Sing me a sweetbread fr an old grandfather. 
Sing me a foot and a doorknob, for you are my love. 
Oh sing, bone bag man, sing. 
Your head is what I remember that Augusty 
you were in love... (Read full poem)

It is the summer bears ruled, the last summer
of pure breathlessness
when I moved unaware, taken in
by the netted branches of raspberries, held
in trance by the sweet air
of the orchards. My grandfather
died at home one night in early July
as... (Read full poem)

A man roams the streets with a basket
of freestone peaches hollering, "Peaches,
peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale."

My grandfather in his prime could outshout
the Tigers of Wrath or the factory whistles
along the river. Hamtramck... (Read full poem)

In my dream, 
drilling into the marrow 
of my entire bone, 
my real dream, 
I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill 
searching for a street sign -- 
namely MERCY STREET. 
Not there. 

I try the Back Bay. 
Not there. 
Not there. 
And yet I know the... (Read full poem)

All afternoon my father drove the country roads
between Detroit and Lansing. What he was looking for
I never learned, no doubt because he never knew himself,
though he would grab any unfamiliar side road
and follow where it led past fields of tall... (Read full poem)

if you like my poems let them
walk in the evening,a little behind you

then people will say
"Along this road i saw a princess pass
on her way to meet her lover(it was
toward nightfall)with tall and ignorant servants."(Read full poem)

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie --
True Poems flee --(Read full poem)