Spider
Remember that day one summer,
how we stepped into the woods,
down
through the thicket of
prickers and honeysuckle
to the nearly dry streambed?
You sat on the rocks,
teasing a dark curl with your
hand
while in shallow green pools
minnows drifted, slow shadows
over bottom silt.
I spied then a grey fuzz on
your shoulder.
I touched the end of your
collarbone,
while in the pool our
reflections drew together.
I coaxed her to my finger
whence she hung aloft
by a gleaming thread
between our faces, caught
in the currents of our breath
alive and turning.
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Halloween
Monday is November, but all day
the trees stir sparse memory
of autumn fire. I'm home
the weekend, and with Emma gone
pink-princess and Will in
faceless mask
my brother Sam, fourteen and
tall
has begged all afternoon a ride
to Salt-Springville, and some
party.
So into the valley, and
rounding
the turn to Windfall barn,
eager teens streaming
uncostumed
through its doors, the few
parents gotup,
a witch, a stumbling
scarecrow, a pumpkin.
In the barn, the band tests
their speakers.
Grass runs under my car,
rustling as I
park. My brother out
before we stop, his bound
checked to a stride
as he passes the girls already
gathered
in a line, thin white arms
cradling darkness.
As if at our arrival, the
sodium lamp tinks on,
its sour, feeble light
veiling their flushed
cheeks.
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Sisyphus
When Grandmother died,
Father took a shaky Spinet
and these thirty acres
for his share.
Eight- and nine-inch maples,
copper beech, a hillside
strewn with broken boulders,
slashed by black scars
where water wells
from the stone deep,
cold seepings mottled
by shadow, and here
one afternoon
I thrust my feet
against wet-leaved earth
lean hard into the rough face
of a boulder,
and heave.
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Life on the Savannah
Alone at night, walking
through wet drizzle,
under the mercury glare
of street lamps,
I sense I'm a wounded impala,
lagging the herd,
and the moon
the ghostly eye
of lion.
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Poet in New York
I've this memory, the wind seething
poplars by the road on a clear morning,
their leaves turning, almost breathing,
a long-armed sun warming
my schoolpack, its heavy-hanging green
shadow stretched over the grey gravel,
and I'm waiting.
That's the whole scene--
it comes to me in the dullness of today
when the rumble of a subway train breaks
through the grate beneath my clouded sky,
past three bridges, the Empire State,
through your thoughts and mine.
I wonder what folly left you behind,
what folly of mine. Come, I will beg myself,
you must return home.
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First Fox
Sunset, silence,
last light burning
the elms' black limbs.
Our dog bristles
at the woods, some bird or branch,
a faint wind-shuddering.
I lean to what's left of sky,
a brilliant edge begging
every star to light. In long grass
then, a red thing crouched
too large for a cat,
ears flattened, its soft tail
sweeping roundly back:
no dog could be that careful,
its dark forefoot
poised an endless instant.
He has eyed me,
and stirs, slips like a shadow
cross the road,
our glance the question
that lets loose the night.
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Postcard, a Lynching
In the picture, the spray of leaves
above the boy
not moving, even a little,
light and shadow
dappling his quiet face, the collar
of his Sunday shirt. How thoughtful
the tilt of his head
against a halo of bright sky,
his index finger parted
just a little from the rest,
as if about to raise his hand
above the branches. His question
beneath him, the piled faces
of the crowd, each
round and dull as stone.
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Caught in the Light
Here, if I smoked, I'd stop
to light up, cradle the tip
against the bite of the dark,
the cigarette taking the thin flame
and seething red. I stop anyway,
just out of the lot,
breath drifting lazily from my mouth,
a faint turning fog, caught in the light
of the three-quarter moon. I glance up,
There by the crown of the hemlock,
in the lighted window of a dorm room,
a girl on her knees on the bed,
her body turned away, toward the boy,
she gives the blinds a slight tug–
I imagine her hand, tight on the string,
release,
The blinds fall, each
horizontal slat
a red stripe through the scene,
and of their kiss, only his hand on her side,
and of the rest, nothing.
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Last Cut
Through this balance of uneasy light,
early fall, the deliberate throttle
of the mower as I give the grass
its last cut before winter,
At yard's edge its blade
clips an apple,
the dull speckled red
springing
into snow. |