When I grow up I want to have a bad leg. I want to limp down the street I live in without knowing where I am. I want the disease where you put your hand on your hip and…

Circumstances analogous to life and death, house cleaning or clutter. Dante or an old shirt. It’s there to cut, but not to chop. Between the knuckle-bones it’s soft as butter. Or you picked a leaf off the road. What is…

The beetle runs into the future. He takes to his heels in an action so frantic its flicker seems to possess the slowness of deep water. He has been green. He will be so yet. His memory ripples emeralds. The…

I ran away from home. I said, I’m going on the Aldermaston March to ban the bomb. They said that this was out of the question, the boy’s mad. Crazy. My mother said, Where will you stay? You’d have nothing…

Is this the nature of all truth, The blazing cock, the bride aloof, The E-string cutting like a tooth, The night that crows? The cock has seen the standing grain, The bride is shrouded by her train, The violin is…

  Where am I? – Oh, I just stepped out, No need to make a fuss, or shout, No need to comb the nearest wood Or roam about the neighbourhood. Call off the dog – she’ll find no scent, Please…

When you are seven years old, lying in the back of a station wagon while your parents play night tennis; when the knowledge that you are going to die one day comes through the rallies, players’ voices, and songs from…

  it woz in april nineteen eighty wan doun inna di ghetto af Brixtan dat di babylan dem cause such a frickshan dat it bring about a great insohreckshan an it spread all owevah di naeshan it woz truly an…

  I The first ten steps from the house to the shed, I break two or three promises the night has strung like spiders’ webs across my path. The morning is sprung with secrets the night’s been spinning all night…

  Your attention please. Train number 9, The Northern Zephyr, destined for River’s End, is now boarding. All ticketed passengers please proceed to the gate marked Evening. Your attention please. Train number 7, Leaves Blown By, bound for The Color…

  Come back once more and walk along the shore, a Styrofoam container in your hand, and search again through litter on the sand for shells and seaweed. Start a new collection. “There’s no such thing as rubbish,” you once…

The northern lights. I wouldn’t have noticed them if the deer hadn’t told me a doe her coat of pearls her glowing hoofs proud and inquisitive eager for my appraisal and I went out into the night with electrical steps…

(for Elizabeth Bishop) Nautilus Island’s hermit heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage; her sheep still graze above the sea. Her son’s a bishop. Her farmer is first selectman in our village; she’s in her dotage. Thirsting for…

For Tanice We found him in front of the garage on an ordinary morning as we walked overburdened with our mother’s briefcase and bags full of files. You were a young woman by then home for summer holidays – the…

  I pursue but I can not catch up with you, Time. You precede me like the echo of sad footfalls in my heart, fading away. Tears pool my eyes as I turn back to find the solace in a…