In The Poetry

A Barred Owl

The warping night air having brought the boom
Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
Can also [...]

This next poem was written at the invitation of a poet friend, John Wood, for the initial issue of an annual devoted to photography. What it has to do with is the relationship of photography to our celebrity cult. The poem’s called ‘Icons’.

Icons

They are one answer to the human need
For a second life, [...]

Transit

A woman I have never seen before
Steps from the darkness of her town-house door
At just that crux of time when she is made
So beautiful that she or time must fade.

What use to claim that as she tugs her gloves
A phantom heraldry of all the loves
Blares from the lintel? That the staggered sun
Forgets, in his confusion, [...]

Mayflies

In somber forest, when the sun was low,
I saw from unseen pools a mist of flies,
In their quadrillions rise,
And animate a ragged patch of glow,
With sudden glittering – as when a crowd,
Of stars appear,
Through a brief gap in black and driven cloud,,
One arc of their great round-dance showing clear.,

It was no muddled swarm I witnessed, [...]

This is a poem about a dream I had and which I tried to tell as accurately as I could because it seemed to me a classic one, that is to say a dream that anyone might have dreamt.

The Ride

The horse beneath me seemed
to know what course to steer
Through the horror of snow I dreamed,
And [...]