Poetry
Drift Away
At work in the upper field, hay tops little buddhas,Calming the meadow and all its attendant tributaries,Porcupine, Basin Creek and God's blue hand like a skillet lidPressing us down to infinity—We thought it was up, but it turns out it's down, Jack, down.Either way we're stuck in the middle, not a bad place to be. Later, sun like a struck medallionOver the west edge of things,
Summer 1968
We'd watch the news on my portable Philco.The jungle was black and white. The bodies were black and white. The whole house strained in its silence. I was 1A. One night my old man threw an alarm clock across my room.He screamed something, but all I caught was a cheap alarm clock, the size of a softball, ringing in the wallboard. The screen flickered. The jungle snowed gray, the bodies gray. The alarm clock, stuck in the wallboard, rang for a minute or more. Nobody touched it for days.
My Father Asks for One Last Thing
Bending over rows of four o’clocksnow wet with evening, he picks offdead blooms, tipping their seedsinto an envelope for next year,though he knows he won’t be here.Through the screen door, I smellcut grass, wild onion, gasoline.Under his T-shirt stained green,his skin’s already begun to yellowlike a window shade finally ruinedby too much smoke and sun.Gloaming is not the word for hownight shows up, draping the city skywhose trapped sulfur and junk-lightfight off true dark. He looks up
Just-So Story
I was at home under the shade of the gumbo-limbo tree Reading the story of what happened to the little elephant with unbridled Curiosity. Still, I ask too many questions, even now. I was imagining the common turtle on his Lucite island In the hollow of the claw-foot tub in our attic dying off with Little drama all that summer long, the water getting imperceptibly More shallow every day, while I was riding brindled horses
Homeworld
You were my crib;then my cellar cell, whose overhead door I banged on night and day to wake you; then my grave— but no, you weren’t a coffin exactly. I was in— suspended animation. Inside an escape pod. Nightly your computer took a breath for me. 26,000 years later, as the hatch blew open, I rubbed
The Greatest English Poet You Haven't Heard of
The wisdom of a poet in nature and in war
Edward Thomas began to write poetry when he was 36. Three years later he was dead, killed in battle in the First World War. Yet in that short span of time he produced the hundred-odd poems that make him one of the most beloved poets of the twentieth century.
America
America, I would like to get closer to you, butyou are the unconscious patient; one hundred internsbicker this morning above your bed. Yesterday,I read for no reason an essay written a decade agoon game theory & economics. Apparently, the problemwith accurate predictions is that sometimes peoplesimply don’t make the rational choice. Illness & sleepare weary metaphors. The poor, who are now homeless,displaced by the storm, rest their heads tonightin luxury beachfront hotel rooms. All I want,one woman says, is my old kitchen where I could cooka hot meal for my kids.
In 1862, George Meredith published a sonnet sequence about adultery. It still has its power, if not its power to shock.
The Gist
We thought we wanted something cuddly,or at the very least, transparent.But everything has a bit of murk about itthese days, especially at this time of year.The box Carol is standing catty-corner tomay contain an antidote to your particular disease,or it may contain nothing at all.Better stick with the stuffed partridge,which can always serve as a token. No onewill ask you for what, or why its feet arepainted that “strange” color.
Appraisal Theory
My son’s in his Watch This years. “Watch this!” He throwsopen the screen door, races through the kitchen, returns in a pant. “See that?” Although I’m watching,I don’t. “I’m back before the screen door closed.” It proves something: how fast he is, how slowthe screen door, how proportionate the rate of shutdown to round trip, like squaring a circle.I’m never sure what “Watch this!” means to show. The house, bought just before the bubble burst,loses value by the hour, the big hand
