When I was five my father threw me in.
He said, You’ll know what to do.
But I didn’t and he jumped in.
And why is that like now?
What am I missing here in the air
now?
96
Acorn query
You could draw a straight line
between the branch and the ground,
and a circle around the silence,
with the nut in the middle
(after the flitting, before the thud
and thump).
Or could once have drawn,
for now the nut, uncapped, speaks no more.
It lies crushed in the soil
and the question it raised has pushed
the circle to the size of the world.
My own was the simple, Will it
hit my head? But its I missed.
I know it now as a silence too late.
Winter wood
Skyscrapers are tears are streams of light
Men would scale them with grappling hooks
But light won’t be hooked and men fall back
to the far shores from which they came
End of ordinary time
Dishes, a window
Yes, I know, I said we didn’t need one,
but later I was glad to pack it
with plates and bottles, and know
how hot it got. There was already enough
with a baby in the house.
Still, I was sorry to let go
the excuse to stare out at
clouds and weightless birds. And I missed
how warm my cold hands were.
Once I wasn’t speaking to someone,
two people actually, and as I washed
tears fell right into the suds.
We had no window then,
just a cupboard with cups
and a light above the sink.
Sun and moon and the cosmic clock
3:10 to the Coast
This way goes a different way,
beautiful from above, past
a factory and windows
and now sheep and now mud.
Who am I, geese, wittily concealed?
Who am I, gulls, your salt sea revealed,
after water and grass
and stubble and mud?
Hanging on
