In The Poetry

Another poem, really about aging. It’s called ‘Who’s Joking with the Photographer? Photographs of Myself Approaching Seventy”

Not my final face, a map of how to get there.
Seven ages, seven irreversible layers, each
subtler and more supple than a snake’s skin.
Nobody looks surprised when we slough off one
and begin to inhabit another.
Do we exchange them whole [...]

Poem for a Daughter

‘I think I’m going to have it,’
I said, joking between pains.
The midwife rolled competent
sleeves over corpulent milky arms.
‘Dear, you never have it,
we deliver it.’
A judgement years proved true.
Certainly I’ve never had you

as you still have me, Caroline.
Why does a mother need a daughter?
Heart’s needle, hostage to fortune,
freedom’s end. Yet nothing’s more perfect
than [...]

In the form of a dialogue, ‘Making Poetry’

“You have to inhabit poetry
if you want to make it.”

And what’s “to inhabit?”

To be in the habit of, to wear
words, sitting in the plainest light,
in the silk of morning, in the shoe of night;
a feeling bare and frondish in surprising air;
familiar… rare.

And what’s “to make?”

To be and to [...]

Here’s a little quatrain called:

On Going Deaf

I’ve lost a sense. Why should I care?
Searching myself I find a spare.
I keep that sixth sense in repair
And deftly set it, like a snare.