At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of... (Read full poem)

You want to know how I spend my time?
I walk the front lawn, pretending
to be weeding. You ought to know
I'm never weeding, on my knees, pulling
clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact
I'm looking for courage, for some evidence
my... (Read full poem)

So gradual in those summers was the going
     of the age it seemed that the long days setting out
when the stars faded over the mountains were not
     leaving us even as the birds woke in full song and the dew
glittered in the webs it appeared... (Read full poem)

Turning it over, considering, like a madman
Henry put forth a book.
No harm resulted from this.
Neither the menstruating     stars (nor man) was moved
at once.
Bare dogs drew closer for a second look

and performed their friendly operations... (Read full poem)

FLANDERS, the name of a place, a country of people,
Spells itself with letters, is written in books.
 
“Where is Flanders?” was asked one time,
Flanders known only to those who lived there
And milked cows and made cheese and spoke the home... (Read full poem)

I say to the lead
Why did you let yourself
Be cast into a bullet?
Have you forgotten the alchemists?
Have you given up hope
In turning into gold?

Nobody answers.
Lead.  Bullet.  With names
Such as these
The sleep is deep and long.(Read full poem)

While you walk the water's edge,
turning over concepts
I can't envision, the honking buoy
serves notice that at any time
the wind may change,
the reef-bell clatters
its treble monotone, deaf as Cassandra
to any note but warning. The ocean,
cumbered... (Read full poem)

1 

Dawn. First light tearing 
at the rough tongues of the zinnias, 
at the leaves of the just born. 

Today it will rain. On the road 
black cars are abandoned, but the clouds 
ride above, their wisdom intact. 

They are predictions. They never... (Read full poem)

We lie back to back. Curtains
lift and fall,
like the chest of someone sleeping. 
Wind moves the leaves of the box elder; 
they show their light undersides,
turning all at once
like a school of fish. 
Suddenly I understand that I am happy.... (Read full poem)

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air--
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat--
plough through... (Read full poem)

Oh, she was sad, oh, she was sad.
She didn't mean to do it.

Certain thrills stay tucked in your limbs,
go no further than your fingers, move your legs through their paces,
but no more. Certain thrills knock you flat
on your sheets on your bed in... (Read full poem)

There was once a woman whose father over 
the years had become an ox.

  She would hear him alone at night lowing 
in his room.

  It was one day when she looked up into his 
face that she suddenly noticed the ox.

  She cried, you're an ox!

  And... (Read full poem)

To find clues where there are none,
That's my job now, I said to the
Dictionary on my desk. The world beyond
My window has grown illegible,
And so has the clock on the wall.
I may strike a match to orient myself

In the meantime, there's the... (Read full poem)