Poems

You are unable
to go to sleep.

You life becomes
a stable of dreams.

The horses of time
Run through the hours.

In the morning dusk you look back
to what you have been through.

In the evening, a falling
down of fire.

The horses rise and
scream in the flaming barn.

Published in The Worcester Review

There are two ways down and back.
              In one, Persephone,
torn from her mother’s side, eats
the red seeds Hades offers, marries him,
dallies underground. A frantic Demeter
bestows the reawakening only
when Persephone rises, and Queen Above
and Queen Below unite.

              In the other story, the mother
pitches forward, dragging her desires behind her.
Seduced by shadows, she sings her own
seed song in the green-carpeted living room. “I
like it here among the dust and dinners,
see how I like it,” she laughs, seated
on the yellow sofa, listening
to Brahms and jazz, nuzzling a cold beer,
cigarette by cigarette.
My sisters and I dance her rituals.
We take her empty bottles
to the cellar and bring up full ones.

She never tells us what we are doing.
We discover ourselves in the slow
falling off, the cold house we grow into.
We serve but cannot save her
from her descent into dissolution.
I grow angry and dark, my sisters press themselves
deeper into the rock. And when she turns inside
to wait, then give up waiting, then to fear
the coming of death,
she is crowned.

At 16, I wander hell alone.
The plague is everywhere, misplaced passion,
exile. I only feel at home
in strange countries, where I listen to the radio
chanting in languages I cannot understand.

So much I forget.
So much is my flesh and bone.

Years pass.
              Still each spring
surprises. Not yet!
I offer homage,
bent into the darkness
pressed against mirror
of the dirt.

              But there is no more waiting.
From misshapen bulbs, leaves push
through, and seeds, tiny black grit,
put forth green, green.
My childhood ends in an abyss,
and I am called up by a song
that rings of blasphemy to my grief:
The year turned.
The year turns.
She dies. I live.

Published in Cumberland Poetry Review

The wounded heart cannot be
healed. Nailed through, it becomes

an icon others worship, kneeling in
awe at the quivering, the heart’s

blood, the real nails. Who keeps
driving the nails? Behind all the

adoration, aren’t we afraid that
one night our hands will forget

the smooth forgiveness of water
and reach for the hammer? One night

the blows will fall on you, on me,
on everyone. The heart will die.

Sometimes reaching for
a hand is like fingering

the stigmata of a dead god.
You hurt. You hope. You hurt.

Published in Harvard Review

Vermeer is like water, like tears.
For instance, either she is
looking right at you, or she is
by the window, intent on the scales,
pouring white milk. She is looking
at you (Vermeer has seen to that),
or she is reading the letter, she is
weighing the jewels, playing music.
Either she has been disturbed, or
she has not been disturbed at all.

Because the windows are high, and she
stands facing the windows, Vermeer
has been obliged to dress her lips,
her arms, her eyes in white,
a blessing of white. The rest
of her is plum and silk, the rest
of her is cream, the rest
of her is pearl. Vermeer
is oyster and tears.

You begin to feel that you
would like to read her letter
(she is not interrupted)
or perhaps, that you belong in it.
She knows what you feel. She is
pleased that this painting continues.

She does not become vain.
Though the more you see her,
the more you fall in love with her,
vanity is not what you have
to give. That, too, is in her letter.

Her eyes will not forget you.

Vermeer has seen to that,
in the white. He has put it there,
though it is not his to decipher.
He has painted interiors,
not the world. To him these rooms
matter most of all. The room
is in the canvas, and light
falls on it as you enter.

Published in Cumberland Poetry Review, winner of the Robert Penn Warren Award (under the title “Vermeer”)

Monet goes out to the field in the morning. The wind blows the broken straw about his feet and tousles the mat of the grain stacks. Behind the hills, the early sunlight pours out, so bright, he sets up his easel in shade. Later, the sun rises from behind the grain stack, burns his eyes into a squint; waves edges until the tangle of the wheat becomes a ragged harlequin cloth hung above the line of hill and sky. The reflection of the sky, the shadows of sight bursting open: in the field he sees flat planes, two houses, their roofs, and curved spots, two figures working, their backs bent, flooded under light; until the round of the stack draws its edges dancing flame, draws its fire through the field, a kaleidoscope in his eyes, as the straws scatter, bathed in a coral sun. And below the last grain stack he signs his name in that red, and walks home, and shadows wash his brushes clean again.

going with Tristan to the wild wood

A long time now I have watched
the horizon. Are you aware that
the line which is land in sky
is also sky in land. And the white glow
just at the edge, that line of meeting
is ripe, as a pear is ripe.
At times—dawn, certainly,
noon sometimes, an afternoon,
or at dusk often—some
quality of light will gather
into ripeness and burst as the pear
devoured dissolves into sweet juice
on the tongue. How is it
that sky and earth do not melt
together, I wonder. How is it
that so perfectly they stand, edge
to edge, and that the path I take
with its edges teased by fronds
of bracken and tall grass
is still a path and not some
endless beckoning into
the dripping dark woods. They do
melt together at night, the land
and the sky; the pear is eaten;
the darkening path beckons.

Published in West

My father does not know he is
going into a nursing home.
Perplexed by Alzheimer's,
but today, uncomplaining, he sits
at the kitchen table, Annie-love,
it's good to see your smiling face.
He's been a drunk for so many years,
it is hard not to think of those words
as a bribe for forgiveness.
But I remember now that for a long time
I have forgiven him, and I hear
his happiness and start to cry,
because he understands, sober
and aged, even less than he did
when he was drunk and middle-aged.

My husband stands near the sink.
We're visiting in the house for the last time.
Next week my father will go
to the nursing home, a cinderblock
and linoleum building where within two weeks
he will charm the staff, insisting everyone
call him Reed, have a heart attack, and die.
Now my father raises his hand,
looks past us and nods toward the dining room,
and, smiling, waves.
When my husband and I turn our heads
to look, we see an empty doorway,
sunlight and shadows stippling the green carpet
and the warm brown of the wooden chairs.
Hello, hello, my father says, waving to the threshold.
Hello, hello, he nods to the brightness, smiling.

Published in The Sun