You’ re stepping on your father, my mother said,
and indeed I was standing exactly in the center
of a bed of grass, mown so neatly it could have been
my father’ s grave, although there was no stone saying so.
You’ re stepping on your father, she repeated,
louder this time, which began to be strange to me,
since she was dead herself; even the doctor had admitted it.
I moved slightly to the side, to where
my father ended and my mother began.
The thing about a shark is — teeth,
One row above, one row beneath.
Now take a close look. Do you find
It has another row behind?
Still closer — here, I’ ll hold your hat:
Has it a third row behind that?
Now look in and... Look out! Oh my,
I’ ll never know now! Well, goodbye.
We finished clearing the last
Section of trail by noon,
High on the ridge-side
Two thousand feet above the creek
Reached the pass, went on
Beyond the white pine groves,
Granite shoulders, to a small
Green meadow watered by the snow,
Edged with Aspen — sun
Straight high and blazing
But the air was cool.
Ate a cold fried trout in the
Trembling shadows. I spied
Abraham Lincoln
his hand and pen
he will be good but
god knows When
I
Once I had 1000 roses.
Literally 1000 roses.
I was working for a florist
back in the shambling ‘Thirties
when iced skids of 250 roses
sold for $2 at Faneuil Hall.
So for $8 I bought
1000 roses, 500
white and 500 red,
for Connie’ s wedding to steadiness.
This time I’ m not going to say a thing
about deity. It’ s not the blizzard,
it’ s three days after. Trinkle from thawing
roofs, ruined crocus pronging through.
Ruin, I promise, won’ t be mentioned again.
Trees, sure, still begging in the road, split
to the bole but this isn’ t about the chainsaw.
A pruning saw will have to do. The puppets
I stopped at a red light on Mass. Ave.
in Boston, a couple blocks away
from the bridge, and a woman in a beat-up
old Buick backed into me. Like, cranked her wheel,
rammed right into my side. I drove a Chevy
pickup truck. It being Boston, I got out
of the car yelling, swearing at this woman,
a little woman, whose first language was not English.
But she lived and drove in Boston, too, so she knew,
we both knew, that the thing to do
is get out of the car, slam the door
Spared by a car or airplane crash or
cured of malignancy, people look
around with new eyes at a newly
praiseworthy world, blinking eyes like these.
For I’ ve been brought back again from the
fine silt, the mud where our atoms lie
down for long naps. And I’ ve also been
pardoned miraculously for years
by the lava of chance which runs down
the world’ s gullies, silting us back.
Here I am, brought back, set up, not yet
happened away.
Light was on its way
from nothing
to nowhere.
Light was all business
Light was full speed
when it got interrupted.
Interrupted by what?
When it got tangled up
and broke
into opposite
broke into brand new things.
What kinds of things?
Drinking Cup
“Thinking of you!
Convenience Valet”
Bloody hell, the world’ s turned
upside down
the flame tree has become
geranium
my coral bed has grown
into a tree
the hummingbird you hammered
to the wall
though tin, could any moment
turn and flee.
The yellow sky has gone
all roundabout
and clover threes where
seaweed used to be
and blood blossoms with fire,
the powers below grow higher —
if things turn right-way-up
will the falling fire stop?
