Yes

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could you know. That's why we wake
and look out--no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

My South: On the Porch

There used to be a way the sunlight caught
The cocoons of caterpillars in the pecans.
A boy's shadow would lengthen to a man's
Across the yard then, slowly. And if you thought
Some sleepy god had dreamed it all up - well,
There was my grandfather, Lincoln-tall and solemn,
Tapping his pipe out on a white-flaked column,
Carefully, carefully, as though it were his job.
And we would watch the pipe-stars as they fell.
As for the quiet, the same train always broke it.
Then the great silver watch rose from his pocket
For us to check the hour, the dark fob
Dangling the watch between us like the moon.
It would be evening soon then, very soon.

Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

The moon put her white hands
on my shoulders, looked into my face,
and without a word
sent me into the night.

Fast Gas

for Richard

Before the days of self service,
when you never had to pump your own gas,
I was the one who did it for you, the girl
who stepped out at the sound of a bell
with a blue rag in my hand, my hair pulled back
in a straight, unlovely ponytail.
This was before automatic shut-offs
and vapor seals, and once, while filling a tank,
I hit a bubble of trapped air and the gas
backed up, came arcing out of the hole
in a bright gold wave and soaked me—face, breasts,
belly and legs. And I had to hurry
back to the booth, the small employee bathroom
with the broken lock, to change my uniform,
peel the gas-soaked cloth from my skin
and wash myself in the sink.
Light-headed, scrubbed raw, I felt
pure and amazed—the way the amber gas
glazed my flesh, the searing,
subterranean pain of it, how my skin
shimmered and ached, glowed
like rainbowed oil on the pavement.
I was twenty. In a few weeks I would fall,
for the first time, in love, that man waiting
patiently in my future like a red leaf
on the sidewalk, the kind of beauty
that asks to be noticed. How was I to know
it would begin this way: every cell of my body
burning with a dangerous beauty, the air around me
a nimbus of light that would carry me
through the days, how when he found me,
weeks later, he would find me like that,
an ordinary woman who could rise
in flame, all he would have to do
is come close and touch me.

Lying in a Hammock

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota-

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distance of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last years's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

One Cigarette

No smoke without you, my fire.
After you left,your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray
and sent up a long thread of such quiet grey
I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal
of so much love. One cigarette
in the non-smoker's tray.
As the last spire
trembles up, a sudden draught
blows it winding into my face.
Is it smell, is it taste?
You are here again, and I am drunk on your tobacco lips.
Out with the light.
Let the smoke lie back in the dark.
Till I hear the very ash
sigh down among the flowers of brass
I'll breathe, and long past midnight, your last kiss.

Summer 1890: Near the Gulf

The hour was late, and the others

were asleep. He struck a match

on the wooden railing of the porch

and lit a cigarette

while she beheld his head and hand,

estranged from the body

in wavering light….

What she felt then

would, like heavy wind

and rain, bring

any open flower to the ground.

He let the spent match fall;

but the face remained

before her, like a bright light

before a closed eye….

Leaning into the Afternoons...

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.

There in the highest blaze my solitude lenghtens and flames,
its arms turning like a drowning man's.

I send out red signals across your absent eyes
that wave like the sea or the beach by a lighthouse.

You keep only darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.

Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes.

The birds of night peck at the stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.

The night gallops on its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassels over the land.

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart

Perhaps the spiral Minoan script is not language but a map. What we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

The End

You must have felt it working in your bones. It's begun: The papers

print the same stories over and over, and have you checked

the obituaries? Already, nobody remembers

how their first kiss went. The phone keeps ringing and ringing

when nobody's home. Between our skins is a necessary friction

that separates us forever. Look: space. Somewhere, a lost key. It's begun:

What was once the wind or an echo or an accidental sweetness

is now a bird outside your window singing with perfect pitch and timbre

the song that's on all our tongues, cut. What pulls from the earth to exist

the earth pulls back into itself: this and this and this is mine.You own nothing.

Our bodies breathe to a rhythm, to one direction, to one regression. It's begun:

The truth stares us down like an owl: There's no place to go: You own nothing.

In the dark you hear movement - a squeak, a hiding. The heart opens, closes, opens.

It's This Way

I stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.

My eyes can't get enough of the trees—
they're so hopeful, so green.


A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I'm at the window of the prison infirmary.


I can't smell the medicines—
carnations must be blooming nearby.

It's this way:being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.

Invisible Dreams

I’m awake when I’m sleeping & I’m
sleeping when I’m awake, & no one
knows, not even me, for my eyes
are closed to myself.
I think I am thinking I see
a man beside me, & he thinks
in his sleep that I’m awake
writing. I hear a pen scratch
a paper. There is some idea
I think is clever: I want to
capture myself in a book.
*
I have to make a
place for my body in
my body. I’m like a
dog pawing a blanket
on the floor. I have to
turn & twist myself
like a rag until I
can smell myself in myself.
I’m sweating; the water is
pouring out of me
like silver. I put my head
in the crook of my arm
like a brilliant moon.
*
The bones of my left foot
are too heavy on the bones
of my right. They
lie still for a little while,sleeping,
but soon they
bruise each other like
angry twins. Then
the bones of my right foot
command the bones of my left
to climb down.

The Insomniac Learns a Lot

Dark voices talk to her
about the most poisonous substance
known to man, about heirloom potatoes
and for an hour acute pain.
Next week: chronic pain.

All around her tiny green, red and orange lights
where things are in sleep mode and standby mode.
The house is a city full of traffic
needing to be told when to stop and go.

Underneath the covers her body is busy
and warm as an animal.
So many litres of sweat drain out of it
she might drown in her mattress
might lie in it like a tank
like a glass coffin.

All night the house ticks and clanks
like a cake cooling on a rack.
With its curtains drawn it is blind
and only two eyes open
only two doll’s eyes fighting open.

In the morning men come to break bottles
men come to cut, they leap from their truck
and mow down hundreds of daisies
that at night close up like fields of fists
because even flowers
know how to go to sleep.

Visiting Hour

In the pond of our new garden

were five orange stains, under

inches of ice. Weeks since anyone

had been there. already by far

the most severe winter for years.

You broke the ice with a hammer.

I watched the goldfish appear,

blunt-nosed and delicately clear.

Since then so much has taken place

to distance us from what we were.

That it should come to this.

Unable to hide the horror

in my eyes, I stand helpless

by your bedside and can do no more

than wish it were simply a matter of

smashing the ice and giving you air.

In Time (New Year's Day)

Beneath the icy pond outside my window

Are eight half-frozen goldfish

Lying in formation, prepared to swim,

One is pale and speckled,

The other seven are carmine,

And all are glorious and held still in time.

Within my window is an Amaryllis,

its tall leafless single stalk

Kept forging toward Heaven,

Finally stopping to prepare to bloom.

All the glorious carmine buds

Are paused before their explosion in

time.