THE SNOW MAN One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and...
Sometimes I find myself thinking so much about what poetry is or what it can do that I forget to think about how it can make me feel. Perhaps that is the sign of a lesser poetry, a poetry with holes in it: one that goes through the motions, the mechanics, of...
IT BLOWS YOU HOLLOW It takes your bones to bed, tongues out the marrow. Says it will meet you halfway, a hotel deep in Oklahoma where you’ll get adjoining rooms and have a couple of nervous breakdowns. It’s a no-show, waylaid. It orders the...
VESPERTINE I can still see it, evenings: the sky an orange liquor over the coming dark, a woman brushing the twigs from her hair, dwarf trees sparkling with a lavender mist. But it’s something else, a step into the old, wonderful story in which the...
EDGES Edges of the field, the blue flowers, the reddish wash of the grasses, the cut green path up to the garden plot overgrown with seedlings and weeds— green first of all, but light, the cut of the sunlight edges each shift of the vivid...