Reading in bed, full of sentiment
for the mild evening and the children
asleep in adjacent rooms, hearing them
cry out now and then the brief reports
of sufficient imagination, and listening
at the same time compassionately
to the scrabble of claws, the fast treble
in the chimney —
then it was out,
not a trapped bird
Washing Kai in the sauna,
The kerosene lantern set on a box
outside the ground-level window,
Lights up the edge of the iron stove and the
washtub down on the slab
Steaming air and crackle of waterdrops
brushed by on the pile of rocks on top
He stands in warm water
Soap all over the smooth of his thigh and stomach
“Gary don’ t soap my hair!”
The batture’ s water and sand disappear
when water swells the river,
heat’ s portion of a northern winter.
Under willows cropped up
since our last cow is dead
and carried to the batture
to be taken by the water
clean into another season,
we sit on green granite
piled deep enough to keep
the batture dry one more week.
The cliff above where we stand is crumbling
and up on the Palisades
the sidewalks buckle like a broken conveyer belt.
Art Deco palm trees sway their hula skirts
in perfect unison
against a backdrop of gorgeous blue,
and for you I would try it,
though I have always forbidden myself to write
poems about the beach at sunset.
All the clichés for it sputter
like the first generation of neon,
and what attracts me anyway
Oh the bear went over the mountain,
The bear went over the mountain,
The bear went over the mountain,
To see what he could see.
But all that he could see,
But all that he could see,
Was the other side of the mountain,
The other side of the mountain,
The other side of the mountain,
Was all that he could see.
So he went back over the mountain,
He went back over the mountain,
He went back over the mountain,
To see what he could see.
What say the Bells of San Blas
To the ships that southward pass
From the harbor of Mazatlan?
To them it is nothing more
Than the sound of surf on the shore, —
Nothing more to master or man.
But to me, a dreamer of dreams,
To whom what is and what seems
Are often one and the same, —
The Bells of San Blas to me
Have a strange, wild melody,
And are something more than a name.
Around the bend of a phrase
you return, it’ s dawn in a book, it’ s
a garden, one can
see everything, the dew, a moth
on a leaf and it’ s you
who rises suddenly amid the pages
and the book grows more lovely
because it’ s you
and you’ ve not grown old, you walk
slowly to the door.
The big ship sails on the ally ally oh,
The alley ally oh,
The alley ally oh.
The big ship sails on the ally ally oh,
On the last day of September.
The captain said, 'It will never, never do,
Never, never do,
Never, never do.'
The captain said, 'It will never, never do,'
On the last day of September.
The big ship sank to the bottom of the sea,
The bottom of the sea,
The bottom of the sea.
The big ship sank to the bottom of the sea,
On the last day of September.
are heading south, pulled
by a compass in the genes.
They are not fooled
by this odd November summer,
though we stand in our doorways
wearing cotton dresses.
We are watching them
as they swoop and gather —
the shadow of wings
falls over the heart.
When they rustle among
the empty branches, the trees
must think their lost leaves
have come back.
A boy who knew enough to save for something
like the whim that took me downtown on the bus
one lost Saturday morning of my mother’ s birthday,
I sat in the back where the gasoline smell
made me dizzy and I closed my eyes but didn’ t
think of her, only of myself, basking in the light
and love that would fall down on me when I
