(In memory of Michael Levine) His red beard copper in the sun, he battled patiently in the black field against the sumac, sassafras, Canadian thistle. For years his forehead burned as he looked toward the oaks’ cool shade and gouged sweat from his eyes and bent again to address his enemies. The fine needles of […]
My grandmother died during my seventh year, my first encounter with Death. I don’t remember how my mother explained it to me, but what I took in was that “death” meant that someone no longer existed. I had never considered such a possibility, and all summer long, it obsessed me. Each night after bedtime, I’d
The rearview mirror rose above a rabbit smashed flat. In the West, we break to our measure. A word in Viet-Nam for river is song. The rabbit is song. In Wyoming the road goes on, sand and sides. The road is the end. The road goes under me and I go on. This is my
All the walls are windows, but opaque From all the years they’ve been here, all the dust, So up on the top steel girders I can hardly Detect the twitching tail of a Norway rat, The last of my certainties surviving still, Feeding on a few brave mice perhaps. The rest is just the universal
Tuck your chin in, brother, don’t look up, Ball up your hands in your pockets, pal, The Hawk is out, the definite Hawk, and Don’t look up, no, don’t look up, Keep that chin tucked in, ‘Cause when that lake black wind Scuts those last year, long ago leaves up Clark Street And they’re twisting
The road is rutted sand through scrubby jack pines, sucking clay that weights the feet, sunstruck tar that reaches after every step, or merciless concrete. No matter, they must run, zigzagging crazily as they can, the bullets raising holes behind them. They can tuck and roll into any ditch they please – one plane barrels
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