Ring Around the Rosie
Ring-a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down.
Ring Out Your Bells
Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread;
For Love is dead
All love is dead, infected
With plague of deep disdain;
Worth, as nought worth, rejected,
And Faith fair scorn doth gain.
From so ungrateful fancy,
From such a female franzy,
From them that use men thus,
Good Lord, deliver us!
River Politics
I spit my smack,
Jim slugs his Jack,
Rob stews his lack,
Carey prepares his rack,
herons hunker on blowdowns,
deer wait on high moon for their rounds,
and the campfire
might as well be an empire
we all
watch dissolve
(in the slough, a carp roll, a splash)
into ash.
Riverlight
My father and I lie down together.
He is dead.
We look up at the stars, the steady sound
Of the wind turning the night like a ceiling fan.
This is our home.
I remember the work in him
Like bitterness in persimmons before a frost.
And I imagine the way he had fear,
The ground turning dark in a rain.
Now he gets up.
And I dream he looks down in my eyes
And watches me die.
Rivus
Immersed
we don’ t
ask
who entered
whose stream.
Take
my hand there
is no
line no
bridge only
fond
foolishness —
the bread
crumbs I
bring you
in
morning —
they float
on the
surface
water with
two
violins
un-
strung like
the silent
song
on your
lips soft
as the
same
hands I
crushed to
keep
you from
death.
"Robbin, A Bobbin, The Big-bellied Ben..."
Robbin, a bobbin, the big-bellied Ben,
He ate more meat than threescore men;
He ate a cow, he ate a calf,
He ate a butcher and a half;
He ate a church, he ate a steeple,
He ate the priest and all the people.
"Robin the Bobbin, the big-bellied Ben..."
Robin the Bobbin, the big-bellied Ben,
He ate more meat than fourscore men;
He ate a cow, he ate a calf,
He ate a butcher and a half;
He ate a church, he ate a steeple,
He ate the priest and all the people!
A cow and a calf,
An ox and a half,
A church and a steeple,
And all the good people,
And yet he complained that his stomach wasn't full.
Robinson at Home
Curtains drawn back, the door ajar.
All winter long, it seemed, a darkening
Began. But now the moonlight and the odors of the street
Conspire and combine toward one community.
These are the rooms of Robinson.
Bleached, wan, and colorless this light, as though
All the blurred daybreaks of the spring
Found an asylum here, perhaps for Robinson alone,
Robinson Escapes to the Cape for Independence Day
O little-know facts — how Robinson attracts them!
Pilgrims rocked ashore here, before Plymouth Rock.
The word scrimshaw is of unknown origin.
The stock name of the archaic two-lane main road? Route 6A. Really
it’ s Old King’ s Highway.
Some facts are useless: the paper bag was invented in Dennis.
Some facts are not: Wellfleet’ s town clock sings out ship’ s time.
19th century Americans observed only three holidays. The Fourth of
July was one.
O witty aperçus — how Robinson accrues them!
Robo
I must admit to this outright theft.
Before the crickets could impede me,
I reached outside my window
to grab as much of Andalusia as
I could in the palm of my hand.
I took the evening's silver
from the olive trees, the yellow slumber
from the lemons, the recipe for gazpacho.
I made a small incision in my heart
and slipped in as much as my left
and right ventricles could hold.
I reached for a pen and a piece of paper
to ease-out the land into this poem.
I closed the small incision in my heart