Electricity

here’s a poem from my book  How the Hand Behaves: Electricity   Pouring through the wires like words, magic I will never understand. Sleight of hand pulls images out of air like ghosts, imprisoning them on the screen in the box. Is the picture tube filled like my brain with gusts of faces? When I

Dumbling

illustration by artistclarf I love fairytales, and became fascinated by an obscure one: “The Nixie of the Mill Pond.” The above artwork comes from that tale. This poem spins out from that tale as well.   Here’s a poem that appears in my book  Vexed Questions: Dumbling       Dumbling, the youngest, pursued by

The Wren

photo by Marianne Roken     Here’s a poem from my book Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky:   The Wren   Omnipotence is foreign to the wren. She is all present in her garbling song, She is all knowing as she carries thin sticks to her nest box She is all loving in the

Untangling

  Here is a poem I wrote after viewing Jeff Wall’s large photograph of the same name in the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington DC, back in 1997.   It appears in my book Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky: Untangling   Greasy yellow hose, thick as a child’s arm, blue rope thick as a dogwood trunk,

Anne Sexton’s Last Reading

  I was a young poet when I saw Anne Sexton give a reading at Goucher College in Maryland  USA.  It was 1974, I believe.  She committed suicide the following day. I wrote this poem about that reading.  It appeared in my book  At the Year’s Elbow:   Anne Sexton’s Last Reading   Seven years

Blue Winged Teal

  Here’s a poem that appears in my book  Life List: Blue-Winged Teal   Small dabbling duck, wallow in freshwater , mince your steps on the sticky fronds of April, rest your blue bill on your speckled chest like a dignified dowager, looking down her nose.   Fashionable in your touches of sapphire on breast

Raisins

photo by Gary Crabbe I wrote this poem about 30 years ago. It appears in my first book, At the Year’s Elbow:   Raisins   The vineyards tumble down hills like children in the summer evening before their parents call them to bed.   The vineyards green and heavy promise wine, glinting secret in casks,

Crocosima

 These flowers are blooming in my garden right now.  The poem comes from my book Reconnaissance.   Crocosima    Named Lucifer, she rides her curving stem Rococo red glad mimic in the shade Seems rare as orchid, skating on her blade Of stiff hard green, her color sings a hymn To all those corms whose

Pulling up the Vines

from blog”it’s Not work, it’s gardening” Here’s a poem that appears in my book How the Hand Behaves:   Pulling up the Vines   Five entwined: Wild grape ,aristocratic leaves and tiny purple berries, English ivy, dignified and sturdy, creeping Clematis, profuse and pungent white flowers, Honeysuckle, seductive, heavy, waxy yellow flowers, and Poison Ivy,

Happy Trails

Here’s a poem which appears in my book Pick it up and Read:   Sonnet on a Line from Frost   There is a singer everyone has heard who lived the fifties in the USA and everyone whose hair is not yet gray can sing his theme song like a mournful bird Whenever someone disappears from