From the house barely, nakedly, burningly driven into pasture beyond— bad daughter thrown across acres without even her mother’s shawls and pillows. Where to sleep where hopping things won’t…

  My corner. My alma mater. Your street. This endangered fish. Even when we are patronizing we say Sure, honey like of course poetry matters. Polo, quilting, Côtes du Rhône.…

  Ice Glen, a side trip on our trip to see old friends. Our plan—a hike, and then there was the thought of Hawthorne and Melville, a century before, and…

  This is how heaven was invented. You know how you can’t remember where you were before you were here? It’s like that. How you point to a picture and…

  She was here, no she was really here. She had taken her shoes off, sat down at the foot of your bed, hand on your peace-white hand, her picnic…

  This train stop at Liberty Airport used to be fields, now folks rush into the city, going home or away to a new beginning. I find myself checking for…

  There are days of no poems. Not even 17 sounds will come. Why is Joan Didion walking congo baby tiger in my dream? Frog in the pond. Scoop her…

  During life I wanted to be buried in a mystery. On a western estuary where seabirds nest. To drop into a piece of muck and shell, unnamed. Wind, low…

  Dwarf plants, brittle green, A premature llama, a white giraffe Splashed clean, a pouter pigeon With an inflatable crop. These are the limit of my estate. The first pouter…

  I hold my life with two hands. I walk with two legs. Two ears are enough to hear Bach with. Blinded in one eye, a person sees with the…

  Night, the street, the lamp, the drugstore, An empty and toothless light. Live another twenty years more— There’s no way out. No use to fight. You die; rebirth is…

  Standing here at the kitchen sink washing the breakfast dishes, I can see this favorite yellow coffee cup of mine, brought back from Italy ten years ago, will break…