Plows pound the shoreline of the storm.
When their wave has passed, the shovels
Unseen rain four hours away on the black horizon.
While you focus on the empty branches above your head
the stars blur into overcast, a milky blue apology
the child within me will not accept.
The Cape Cod inlets flow through him
like the roots of these trees thread mountains.
He is a trick of the light, of beach grass and sand.
And now the days are too short, he will never get home.
The dogs a brown blur against blinding
white barely visible ridges and striations
Patterns of falling and wind-riddance
the shapeless back yard a single unique
print of the storm’s finger but nothing
weighing in as evidence more so
than my daughter’s bright red jacket
so lively against this erasure
like my love for that life and
everything that came before it
and the blue of the twilight
and the black of what follows
A silent movie walks into a bar.
Far off to the east fragments of cloud
hover in the foreground, closing credits. The clear blue sky
revolves behind them like a child’s picture lamp
before it catches on fire. But the sky does not move.
Only the clouds are moving, their vacancy signs
flashing as they pass the moon.
After a light overnight snow grounded things stand out
like a character for winter
autumn’s fallen sticks seem arranged
a gentle alphabet of dropped and windblown things
are all alphabets constructed of things that no longer grow
snapped or broken things until the world made sense of the drift
do I know as I look down on them they are looking
past me pointing to all that is still living above our heads
to all that will be green again whether I look or not
are all languages a message in relief or is it my own relief
that words will never be in season the spring they sprouted
from long gone the spring yet to arrive as forgetful
as we are with each other with growing and shedding
that even my name is an accidental landing
Attending a Poetry Festival I Wonder What A World Full of Poets Would Be Like, And As I Leave the Building Into the Mid-Winter Afternoon Air I Hear the Late Migration Of a Canada Goose
In a room of a hundred poets my ego diminishes. My name grows so small
I can no longer find it on the program. But it turns out I am everywhere,
in every poem I hear, someone is calling my name! In the parking lot, in the cold air
above me a lone goose is calling as he flies, looking for companions traveling
his way. I look—no, he is not alone after all. There is one, silent, flying beside him.
the moon smiles thinly
brittle stars laugh — even I
can walk on water
wise snow shovel waits:
sun slurs the mess awash down
hill: I sit, rest, read.
*
up with your child, night’s
anxious middle shows its calm
underside to you
Translations from the English 