Poetry

Away from the cruel magnification
            of a shaving mirror, I clean up well.
I am content with orange teeth and salty
            skin, with having borrowed my beauty 

            from the ocean. See my kelpy eyes, the pearl
on my...

What realms of gold did they travel,
these old field glasses? Her last pair,
focused beyond the tame sea-stacks 
of glass and bottle, they’d have caught––
from her Boston Harbor condo–– 
birds in maneuvers, breaches of whales.

Yes, I’m that Martial known all across the world 
for my elegiac couplets, hendecasyllables,

It’s hard for
the master
sharpener after
all that work
to have the shaft
taken for the point.

You can oversell
the sea, say, or
the way we miss

Fox spots Crow in the top of a tree.
“That carrion she pecks must come to me.”
He ponders how to ply his wit
And award himself the whole of it.

He was the last cowboy in Massachusetts,
stabling the palomino in his mother’s garage,

            It was amusing to see
     The quick pet Sparrow and the Cat
     Engage in harmless duels that
  Exercised their friendly rivalry.

Consider the bowerbird and his obsession
of blue, and then the island light, the acacia,
the grounded beasts. Here, the iron smell of blood,
the sweet marrow, fields of grass and bone.

All day I’ve followed roads. Have I come that far?
Terre Haute, Greencastle. Kokomo’s not close, but not far.