It was so cold on those steps in Northampton

New Years Eve, Two-thousand-and-that-infernal year.

Our breath hung in the air, white particles in space

pulled together to form planets, stars, reflected light.

There was a moment when the band was silent,

when the only sounds were staccato applause

and the cardboard whip of corduroy against ( Read more... )

She sat on the stairs.
   Salt, sea and wind reflected
in her eyes, refracted
   to jet ovals on their way
down her cheek

"The water is running," she observed,
   not toward us but away."
In the silence that only comes
   From waves, like a deep breath
and a sigh over the shore,

I watched the sea run.  Open-mouthed
   bodies screaming toward the ( Read more... )

So when heat rises
   from the mud of earth,
Under earthworms, their skin
   raging
Moving through drying crust; turning
   luscious soil into pebbled
Mounds between the grass,
Eager fingers knead into soft
   curves, melt through the
Ringlets, the swirling midnight
   of rising air.

When my heart races beyond sleep ( Read more... )

All is silence like lead ( Read more... )

Gilead

On their walls hung
thin paper wrapped in glass
and wood.  Each said
"I am a professional, I care,"
as they sketched clouds
rolling to the horizon.

The jagged twist of your car
said you were lost in pain.
The disconnected memories
left your story incomplete.

"I remember balmy summer
afternoons.  The sound of thunder
from my bat, the warm skin of my ( Read more... )

In my mouth the little cracker
crunches like fresh snow
its memory preserved in the red corners of my lips

Later, the last breath of that orange cracker
will rise, up from my stomach, bulging
my throat, pressing outward in Gregorian bliss

Free from its flesh, the morsel,
tiny, meaningless, orange,
will push through windows, under doors.  It will be ( Read more... )

Perhaps every third stanza in a poem
   should be a definition
Explaining just what one child can do
A declaration in sunflowers spread
   over the gates of hell, petals
Curling on the foul air,
   that damned breath
Exhaling

                       of small things ( Read more... )

This is the quiet of civilizations ( Read more... )