Driving at Night to My Mother’s House the Day After Christmas 33
After Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler at the Abbey Theater 37
Please Refrain from Celebratory Gunfire 40
Saratoga Passage, August 2014 54
The Color of the Fluid in My Father’s Catheter Reminds Me of Snowball Flavors 58
Summer Grass Aches and Whispers 67
Ways of Looking at 13 Dead Bald Eagles 68
…that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.
–Gary Snyder
Dream, July 5, 2006
Coyote has crept into the house
up from the ravine where he
has followed deer from the county
into the city along Herring Run.
I go to rescue the cat
in the living room, fend off
the intruder by kicking at it,
kicking my wife in her calf
as I thrash about asleep,
waking myself up with a laugh
as Jen punches me in the shoulder,
rolls over, and falls back to sleep.
At night, these predators
creep into our life like doubt,
wild, uninvited, but something
we live with, fence out, fend off
when it gets too close, and listen
to at dusk as it calls from far off,
lonely, seeking insecurity, its mate.
We shudder at its untamability,
its reminder to huddle close
against the darkness
just beyond our embrace.
Kevin
Has danced into class every day this year.
Some days, he’s James Brown throwing off his cape;
others, he’s pop-locking old-school style,
moon-walking, doing the Harlem shake, or leanin’ wit it.
His eyes always smile, especially when goofing
to cope with the challenge of reading. Today,
something’s wrong. I pull him into the hall and ask,
why the angry look, the sulking.
Two cousins shot on their stoop last night,
one dead, he and his brother having just
gotten up to leave, having just turned the corner
to walk the two blocks home.
This world of darkness, punctuated
by
