Poetry

To save her, they had to cut her brain in two,
Had to sever nerves, strip one lobe almost bare—
It left her blind.

My neighbors’ dog, shut out of their house
a quarter mile uphill from us, has barked
all night, protesting. 

There are some things that can’t be conveyed—
description, for instance,
The sundown light on that dog hair lodge pole pine
and the dead branches of spruce trees.

the absent have left the window open:
the last soldier, stricken,
his moustache gently covered over, has left the bed
undone[…]

I watched
a junco
climb a spruce
as if upon
a spiral stair […]

Like rivers, my thoughts flow south,
for no particular reason.
Must be the full moon
That floods the sky, and makes the night wakeful
and full of remorse.

Nothing to hosanna,
you will be buried

Cold. Only the living
go on living.

His face coming briefly into view

As the crowd pushes

Toward the subway entrance.

In its frame of light it faintly glows,
like a projection screen […]

Whose name will be inscribed in the book
                                                                 just before mine?