POEMS
These four partial poems are displayed to provide an impression, a taste, of free verse and sonnets.
Last Light
East of Wheatland, western stretch
Wyoming, straight as time, and flat,
the engine sputtered, slowed, then halted,
ground to empty silence. There among
your sighs, you tinkered, hunched beneath
the hood, the metal maw, while back
behind you, hovered muted mauves
and blues, and dusty grays of dusk. I held
the swaying lantern, twisted, got a glimpse
of distant knoll. A farmhouse flickered on
first light. The hush… the silence… God,
the hollow still. The holy. But for clicking
wrenches, muffled moans, and back contorted
over chrome, city time unfolded… letting out
its breath. Over the graying yellow ground it came—
a cry, a coyote call...
. . .
The Road to Shepetovka
The house stands by, so old. Its skirts
are hiked up from the mud. The shelter
stoops, a solitary wooden grey. There is no
darkness, yet there is no light. And still
the sky is strange … it hovers
all around us, white.
Off the bus,
we stretch our legs. This is the place
. . .
This Winter Night
This winter night
let the winds howl their
hollow song
let the rain streak sideways
scratching at the black
window pane
This winter night
let the raven run to shelter
and the mule deer limp
its line of fading footprints in the mud
Go ahead
let a thousand spirits whine
the dying of the earth
This winter night
your arms make a circle around me
and in this one small room
the air is thick with blossoms
Agamemnon Enters the Lion Gate
(Italian sonnet)
Ten long years of war—a terrible wait
for woman dreamed of … painted halls of stone …
of cumin, coriander … raiment sewn
with sequins … safety of the citadel, the state.
Cassandra follows, mumbles words of fate
and fury. He belly-laughs and lets her drone
her mad-woman speech in ghastly monotone.
Agamemnon enters the Lion Gate,
. . .
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