You make me, move me,
dwell in me, and beckon.
What without you
do I do at all?
You make me, move me,
dwell in me, and beckon.
What without you
do I do at all?
Dead letters, those gods,
rise to climb the sky of the mind.
They screw on stars to make words
and leave us to raise their babies.
Love
is an
exercise in failure
through which
glory shines
I never got anywhere because I
never drove it home. I just stuck a
forlorn thumb in the wind.
What I meant to say was
that sometimes, under certain
circumstances, you remind me of a
steamroller flattening the world,
but then of course the friendly kind,
the kind anyone would want
to get to know!
Wondering why
wet sand sticks
but wet rocks don’t, I
thought I’d ply my
scientist father-in-law.
He’ll know, I thought.
But then, No,
I thought,
I won’t.
For gain of the knowledge of that
will mean loss of my pleasure in this.
Give me the taffy of sunlit unknowns!
With Apologies to My Wife
Pivoting between
the bowl with the apple
and plate with the peel,
I put some
one in the other
and other in the one.
Since such
sins of inattention
are frequent and real,
to God and woman
I humbly appeal:
Forgive the slivers
between tooth and gum,
and all the apple-
based deeds I have done!
I took every road
crazy had to offer.
I stashed them tight
beneath my bed.
Some people came
and stole my roads.
Those roads have gone to their head!
Mary Samuels, a Presbyterian,
called them “tricky things” —
the hand dip and swooping
genuflection, kneelers,
chest thumps and
thumb-wrought crosses —
overdrawn feints
to fool the mind of God!
Love, a ribbon of light,
troubles me from bed and
out the door,
unfurling and
curling back,
tying me to my neighbor