Daydreaming in a meeting I hear you tell your age. I feel old, until you smile. I remember, after reading Homer I lay lonely in my dormitory with Calypso kissing and touching me. Her divinity pulsed but felt imperfect and I knew she was using me as a mortal takes in air to breathe. I stopped her hand and drew my sword but her startled eyes disarmed me. I sheathed my bronze, sighing. On that cliff above the waves we rolled, sublime, to thunder and she forgot that man from Ithaca. Now at t...

Self is a snake, blind and lazy before shedding.

Daydreaming in a meeting I hear you tell your age. I feel old, until you smile. I remember, after reading Homer I lay lonely in my dormitory and imagined Calypso, kissing and touching me. Her divinity pulsed but felt imperfect and I knew she was using me as a mortal takes in air to breathe. I stopped her hand and drew my sword but her startled eyes disarmed me. I sheathed my bronze, sighing. On that cliff above the waves we rolled, sublime, to thunder and she forgot that man from Ithaca...

Daydreaming in a meeting I hear you tell your age. I feel old, until you smile. I remember, after reading Homer I lay lonely in my dormitory and imagined Calypso, kissing and touching me. Her divinity pulsed, but felt imperfect and I knew she was using me as a mortal takes in air to breathe. I stopped her hand and drew my sword but lost myself in her startled eyes. I sheathed my bronze, sighing. On that cliff above the waves we rolled over and she forgot that man from Ithaca. Now at th...

  Emerging from the spiral staircase a tall, handsome man smiles. He startles you in the open air and light.   You greet him, communicate cheerfully about Vermont, tentatively about going through that door how it might be dark and scary to climb. He reassures you in a deep Virginian’s drawl and tells vividly of the observation deck. But you decide finally, thoughtfully, against. You look at me and then grab his finger. He helps you step carefully down broad marble steps to...

How do I mourn a marriage passed? With a village wailing perhaps scooping dirt, palm by palm my relatives’ cries dissonant and shrill. How do I mourn a marriage passed? Maybe alone, fist bloodied and mirror smashed, on my back screaming at the bathroom ceiling teeth and tongue stained with wine. How do I mourn a marriage passed? In vital celebration I suppose, singing near my casket. “Isn’t it grand boys to be bloody well dead?” Trade this bitterness for hops. How d...

The ice turned to rain, yesterday in this high-walled valley. The Hoosic climbed clumsily from her nap, an old woman escaping her bed. Slower than December she moved in secret shedding her silt on the bank, careful to leave no slipper as a clue to her ramble. (I fled her once in fear. She rose on my house, young drunk, intending violence. I think she might remember I forgave before she sobered.) She returned to her dream of the Hudson by dusk. This morning I went bundled to check on her, t...

I caught your eyes at a distance- lightning behind clouds, far to the north. I'll miss the thunder and wind.

Late summer in the Green Mountains long after noon, the labored earth bears a now perfect valley. Her first cries, crickets and red-winged blackbirds. She is restless in her cradle, lilac and raspberry. The south wind rocks her, sings in sycamore and whispers insects into dust rising above the old farm road. The sun, exhausted, caresses her cheeks and rests his warm lips on her brow. In dew and grass he sees her mother’s face- in goldenrod and Jerusalem artichoke, his own.

on Culp’s Hill trees and granite sculpted in morning light my son asks "Why'd they fight in such a pretty place?"