Poetry

I find, after all these years, I am a believer—
I believe what the thunder and lightning have to say;
I believe that dreams are real,
        and that death has two reprisals;
I believe that dead leaves and black water fill my heart.

Watching a couple of crows
playing around in the woods, swooping
in low after each other, I wonder
if they ever slam into the trees.

It is an old drama
this disappearance of the leaves,
this seeming death
of the landscape.

He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,

This morning I sit across from you
at the same small table,
the sun italicizing

A raindrop fell on my hand,
crafted from the Ganges and the Nile,

from the ascended frost of a seal’s whiskers,
from water in broken pots in the cities of Ys and Tyre.

No, I just can’t write today, I said
to myself, sprawling on the couch, my mind
an open invitation to sleep, when there it was:
The Invisible Hand. A title. Having arrived
unbidden, it felt like inspiration,