Little Robin Redbreast
Sat upon a tree;
Up went Pussy-cat,
Down went he.
Down came Pussy-cat,
And away Robin ran;
Says little Robin Redbreast
“Catch me if you can.”
Little Robin Redbreast
Hopped upon a wall;
Pussy-cat jumped after him,
And almost got a fall.
Little Tom Tucker
Sings for his supper.
What shall we give him?
White bread and butter.
How shall he cut it
Without a knife?
How will he be married
Without a wife?[
One stood among the violets
listening to a bird. One went to the toilet
and was struck by the moon. One felt hopeless
until a trumpet crash, and then lo,
he became a diamond. I have a shovel.
Can I turn it into a poem? On my stove
I’ m boiling some milk thistle.
I hope it will turn into a winged thesis
before you stop reading. Look, I’ m topless!
Listen: approaching hooves!
One drowned in a swimming pool.
One removed his shoes
and yearned off a bridge. One lives
with Alzheimer’ s in a state facility, spittle
Surely there are teeth so small.
I have listened for their turning,
this frail swell and fall
like old blood yearning
upwards through the skin of days.
Slowly, I am learning
their count, though numbers fray
in me, and the loaded instants
graft, coming always
First there were those who died
before I was born.
It was as if they had just left
and their shadows would
slip out after them
under the door so recently closed
the air in its path was still
swirling to rest.
Some of the furniture came from them,
I was told, and one day
I opened two chests
of drawers to learn what the dead kept.
There is so much sweetness in children’ s voices,
And so much discontent at the end of day,
And so much satisfaction when a train goes by.
I don’ t know why the rooster keeps crying,
Nor why elephants keep raising their trunks,
Nor why Hawthorne kept hearing trains at night.
A handsome child is a gift from God,
And a friend is a vein in the back of the hand,
And a wound is an inheritance from the wind.
My father’ s dying
resembles nothing so much
as a small village
building itself
in the mind of a traveler
who reads about it
and thinks to go there.
The journey is imagined
in a way not even felt
as when years ago
I knew my father would die someday.
The idea came up as fast
as a curve in a road
which opens out
to an unexpected vista,
and now in this journey
the road gravel crunches
under my tires. I miss
some of the streets,
get lost, get lost.
It was a poem
men took because it said ovary
didn’ t take my
political poems
they took the one that said ovary
Are you sure it was because it
said ovary?
Yes, for them that’ s logical.
---------------------------
Destroy another
city
What
else
is war for? So
you’ ll go down
each of you does. dies in
whirlwind
I’ ll know the time to leave the room
where I’ ve been growing hair
from my face, drinking dark beers
when the light in the lake bums out.
That’ s when fish
turn on their music.
They lie in a blue current
waiting for the moon
to pass over, and the fishermen
with their lanterns know this
as they spill a can of sweet corn
and wonder if they spoke
