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?
Tag Archives: poetry
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.
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
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.
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?
Commuter
Amid the vast network of tracks and trains
one puts his body in and
it matters a lot whether he
puts it in or in front of the
train. We who ride know
the difference, but he who
has stalled and rerouted us
is blank, extinguished,
a smoke without a flame
The wind blew my leaves away
I’ve lost all my sparkly bits.
I’ve no wool for the winter.
Look at me, sleek and black,
sexy but cold.
An I.V. and more
I went spiralling down into my friend’s surgery,
into the needle they stuck in his back.
Heard them say, Don’t move.
Felt the hard force of it.
Don’t move.
Went with his eyes to the lights later.
You should see him on the courts,
the balls he hits.
Or did.
In doubles you’d make sure
he was on your side.
A cold snap
My salt dashed has not kept you, bird,
though my mother said it would.
You’ve left the fence, you’re ochre now,
and the boy, bereft, is wonder-whyed
and blue.
The sower’s illustrious labor
Christ is bold growing
amber corn glowing,
fields of silk, knowing
that crushed sugar sun
will keep us at last
Utrecht Journal 