in poems you are not required
to tell the truth exactly as it is —
All articles filed in poet
i suppose i could say
i suppose i could
say nothing happened today
but that is a lie
dressed for spring
midway up the hill
the neighbor’s weeping fig
is dressed for spring
a gown of bridal white blossoms
shielding leafless branches.
the lily bed
if i had any rage i took it out on the lily bed and its web of ingrown roots the fruit of thirty years of spawning tigers i scythed and hoed, slicing through sod separating innumerable worms from their other ends and cleaving through the rusty orange roots that choked the ground until, at last,…
Read Morei saw her there
i saw her there in the store
wearing lavender ankle pants and pearls and pushing a baby buggy
while two little girls in hair bows tripped dutifully behind
prelude
the sharp blade pierced the greening grass
and shovelfuls of soil revealed wakened worms
shrinking away from the light
skeptical soil
ten trees arrived in the mail today
their tender trunks scarcely more than twigs
but already I was imagining the bank
of white blossoms in the spring —
hawthorne, dogwood, crab —
and the pale hellebores i’d bought
that would start blooming in the snow
west of eden
on this side of the
prelude to spring, all of that
secret world is gone
green jello
every year the dish looms before me on the thanksgiving buffet, its lurid contents lurking, watching for the next innocent plate to appear.
Read Morethe wild garden
all the flowers in the wild garden
have yielded their spirits to autumn’s chill
and become dry brown ghosts, their seeds
falling out of cracked heads and cones