Poetry

Small Summer Book

in memoriam Fanny Howe

1

Even shadows melt

in this heat, and cast black ink

down the concrete stairs.

2

Blue chicory sprawls

along a hill, verging on

purple. Further up,

an old stone church looms, and bends

deep into its own shadow.

3

Poetry is all

that remains between us—here

in a single breath.

4

A mandala of

weeds whisks the blunt summer light

in a cracked concrete

field, where I rest my vision

and wait for panic to pass.

5

Shapely with the scent

of lilacs—

the slow summer wind.

6

No poet is gone

for long—the poems breathe them

back as we breathe through

the poems. Voice now outside

of time: neither yours nor mine.

7

A flower reaches

through the heat, attached and

unattached to its stem.

8

In the window clouds

convulse, blue to gray to black.

Rain strafes haze drifting

in from leftover forests

primordial. Sidewalks steam.

9

In an alley, Queen

Anne’s lace leans

into its shadow.

Into its shadow,

Queen Anne’s lace

unraveling light.

Eclipse Season

These days, I gaze at the transom

where summer withdraws

and color drums the far corner.

A negotiation

between oblivion and song.

This life lashed to light

a window cuts into time.

Agony

when the poem murmurs,

half-heard, beneath the blur.

August’s Edge

Cloud-high pines

at the river’s lip

reflect against

black water;

trunks blurred

by invisible

currents. I sit

at a table, gray

wood chipped

with initials

and listen

to Gregorian chant

through headphones:

syllables

sculpting air

into a shape

that resembles time.

A shape held

in mind

and turning

like a diamond

before the inner-eye.

I sit and listen;

I disintegrate

into the patterns

in a field

wild after a day of rain

and how long

now, the heat.

View from a Backroad in Upstate New York

On a steep, green hill

all the tombstones are falling

away from their names.

Companions

All summer the dead

poets have walked with me—through

the humidity

and deep, swarming green—

a ghost metronome that kept

the pace of breathing.

Between the life and

the poem, they said, there is

no difference now.