What if each time
you caused pain
a small round stone
was put in your pocket
pebbles for inducing
self-doubt
osmium for death.
When you heard
someone approach
their pockets noisy
you’d know,
just as dogs do:
to keep distance.
Some men
would pull wagons
behind them,
their pants disfigured.
They’d be shamed
from sidewalks
delayed at customs,
they could never
lie flat on beds.
They’d have
to stand feeling
the weight of
what they’d done.   

~ from THE PARK (2020 Copper Canyon Press)

Out of the bosom of the Air,     
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, 
Over the woodlands brown and bare,     
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,       
Silent, and soft, and slow       
Descends the snow. 
 
Even as our cloudy fancies take     
Suddenly shape in some divine expression, 
Even as the troubled heart doth make 
In the white countenance confession,       
The troubled sky reveals       
The grief it feels. 
 
This is the poem of the air,     
Slowly in silent syllables recorded; 
This is the secret of despair,     
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,       
Now whispered and revealed       
To wood and field.

~ in the public domain

I want to get up early one more morning,

before sunrise. Before the birds, even.

I want to throw cold water on my face

and be at my work table

when the sky lightens and smoke

begins to rise from the chimneys

of the other houses.

I want to see the waves break

on this rocky beach, not just hear them

break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to see again the ships

that pass through the Strait from every

seafaring country in the world—

old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,

and the swift new cargo vessels

painted every color under the sun

that cut the water as they pass.

I want to keep an eye out for them.

And for the little boat that plies

the water between the ships

and the pilot station near the lighthouse.

I want to see them take a man off the ship

and put another up on board.

I want to spend the day watching this happen

and reach my own conclusions.

I hate to seem greedy—have so much

to be thankful for already.

But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.

And go to my place with some coffee and wait.

Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

~ from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

(Random House, 1985)

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark.  Go without sight, 
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

~ from Farming, A Hand Book (Counterpoint, 2011)

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
    Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
    From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
    A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
    You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
    Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
    They will not keep you waiting at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
    Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
    Yea, beds for all who come.
 
~ Public domain

begins to rise from the chimneys

of the other houses.

I want to see the waves break

on this rocky beach, not just hear them

break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to see again the ships

that pass through the Strait from every

seafaring country in the world—

old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,

and the swift new cargo vessels

painted every color under the sun

that cut the water as they pass.

I want to keep an eye out for them.

And for the little boat that plies

the water between the ships

and the pilot station near the lighthouse.

I want to see them take a man off the ship

and put another up on board.

I want to spend the day watching this happen

and reach my own conclusions.

I hate to seem greedy—have so much

to be thankful for already.

But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.

And go to my place with some coffee and wait.

Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

~ from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

(Random House, 1985)

Once when the lawn was a golden green
and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials
in the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed
with the chirr and murmur of insects, I lay in the grass,
feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered
what I would become and where I would find myself,
and though I barely existed, I felt for an instant
that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard
my name as if for the first time, heard it the way
one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off
as though it belonged not to me but to the silence
from which it had come and to which it would go.

~ from Collected Poems (Knopf, 2014)

Standing at the swell of the muddy Mississippi
after the Urgent Care doctor had just said, Well,
sometimes shit happens, I fell good and hard
for New Orleans all over again. Pain pills swirling
in the purse along with a spell for later. It’s taken
a while for me to admit, I am in a raging battle
with my body, a spinal column thirty-five degrees
bent, vertigo that comes and goes like a DC Comics
villain nobody can kill. Invisible pain is both
a blessing and a curse. You always look so happy,
said a stranger once as I shifted to my good side
grinning. But that day, alone on the riverbank,
brass blaring from the Steamboat Natchez,
out of the corner of my eye, a girl, maybe half my age,
is dressed, for no apparent reason, as Wonder Woman.
She struts by in all her strength and glory, invincible,
eternal, and when I stand to clap (because who wouldn’t),
she bows and poses like she knew I needed the myth,
—a woman, by a river, indestructible

~ from The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018)

I apologize to coincidence for calling it necessity.
I apologize to necessity just in case I'm mistaken.
Let happiness be not angry that I take it as my own.
Let the dead not remember they scarcely smolder in my memory. 
I apologize to time for the muchness of the world overlooked 
  per second.
I apologize to old love for regarding the new as the first. 
Forgive me, far-off wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize to those who cry out of the depths for the minuet-record.
I apologize to people at railway stations for sleeping at five in 
  the morning.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing now and again.
Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing up with a spoonful of water.
And you, O falcon, the same these many years, in that same cage,
forever staring motionless at that self-same spot,
absolve me, even though you are but a stuffed bird.
I apologize to the cut-down tree for the table's four legs.
I apologize to big questions for small answers.
O Truth, do not pay me too much heed.
O Solemnity, be magnanimous unto me.
Endure, mystery of existence, that I pluck out the threads of your 
  train.
Accuse me not, O soul, of possessing you but seldom.
I apologize to everything that I cannot be everywhere.
I apologize to everyone that I cannot be every man and woman.
I know that as long as I live nothing can justify me,
because I myself am an obstacle to myself.
Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,
and later try hard to make them seem light.

~Translated from the Polish by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire, from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry

Everybody said it was useless
Everybody said, "you're trying to lean on sun dust"
that the beloved before whose tree I stand
can't be reached
Everybody said, "you're crazy to throw yourself 
headlong into a volcano and sing"
Everybody said that salty mountain 
won't yield even one glass of wine 
Everybody said, "You can't dance on one foot"
Everybody said there won't be any lights at the party
That's what they all said
but everybody came to the party anyway

translated by: Sharif Elmusa and Charles Doria
~ from The Flag of Childhood, edited by Naomi Shihab Nye (Aladdin Paperbacks, 2002)

The floorboards creak overhead, 
heavy with stars. 
The sound makes you think of the dead, 
as though they’re closer than you knew: 
like the doubled s in essence, 
an extra consonant slipped into the word 
for the very truth of you. 

~ from Heaven’s Thieves (Brick Books, 2016)

9				

I broke your heart.
Now barefoot I tread	
on shards.


17

Why is the word yes so brief
It should be
the longest,
the hardest,
so that you could not decide in an instant to say it,
so that upon reflection you could stop
in the middle of saying it.


59

Writing down verses, I got	
a paper cut on my palm.
The cut extended my life line	
by nearly one-fourth.

~ from If There Is Something to Desire (Alfred A Knopf, 2010) Translated from the Russian by Steven Seymour

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
Wonder and grief. the light spraying
Through the lace of fern is as delicate
As the rivers of memory forming their web
Around the knot in my throat. The breeze
Makes the birds move from branch to branch
As this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
In the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
Of the next stranger. In the very Center, under
It all, what we have that no one can take
Away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
By a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

~ From Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness, (Sounds True, 2016)

Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.
Not only the heavy apple,
the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.
 
To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.
 
And however sharply
you are tested –
this sorrow, that great love –
it too will leave on that clean knife. 	

~ from The October Palace (HarperPerrenial, 1994)

What things are steadfast? Not the birds. 
Not the bride and groom who hurry 
in their brevity to reach one another. 
The stars do not blow away as we do. 
The heavenly things ignite and freeze. 
But not as my hair falls before you. 
Fragile and momentary, we continue. 
Fearing madness in all things huge 
and their requiring. Managing as thin light 
on water. Managing only greetings 
and farewells. We love a little, as the mice 
huddle, as the goat leans against my hand. 
As the lovers quickening, riding time. 
Making safety in the moment. This touching 
home goes far. This fishing in the air.

~ from All of It Singing, New and Selected Poems
(Greywolf Press, 2008)

This awkward speck of dust, 
this universe, time, and every
act and thought  
from mineral to man,
deposited in the library of my marrow.

I do not know what I know
it enters through another door,
disturbs my fragile understandings,
rattles my dinnerware and knocks
all my trophies off their shelves. 

Breathed in loving madness,
revealed beyond the mind
and the shape of things.

Do not be betrayed
by philosophies and enlightenments– 
all there is to be 
was yours before you began. 

~ from Breaking the Drought: Visions of Grace 
(Larson Publications, 2007)

Eventually the future shows up everywhere:
those burly summers and unslept nights in deep
lines and dark splotches, thinning skin.
Here's the corner store grown to a condo,
the bike reduced to one spinning wheel,
the ghost of a dog that used to be, her trail
no longer trodden, just a dip in the weeds.
The clear water we drank as thirsty children
still runs through our veins. Stars we saw then
we still see now, only fewer, dimmer, less often.
The old tunes play and continue to move us
in spite of our learning, the wraith of romance,
lost innocence, literature, the death of the poets.
We continue to speak, if only in whispers,
to something inside us that longs to be named.
We name it the past and drag it behind us,
bag like a lung filled with shadow and song,
dreams of running, the keys to lost names. 

~ from Only As The Day Is Long, New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton and Co, 2019)

Some days it’s all fuzzy.
I can’t find the world,
Can’t find the beloved.
Can’t even find the words.

Time to lie back and listen.
Maybe something’s being said,
Something I haven’t heard.

Time to stop talking	
And let the beloved speak.

Time to trust it all;
To stop searching
And let the beloved seek.

~ From Concerning The Book That Is The Body Of The Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2005)

Our pool is still blue but a few leaves
have fallen, floating on the surface

of summer. The other swimmers
went home last week, tossed

their faded bathing suits aside,
so my daughter and I are alone

in the water which has grown colder
like a man's hand at the end of

a romance. The lifeguard is under
her umbrella but her bags are packed

for college. We are swimming against
change, remembering the endless

shores of June: the light like lemonade,
fireflies inside our cupped hands,

watermelon night. We are swimming
towards the darkness of what

is next, walking away from the sounds
of laughter and splashing, towels

wrapped around the dampness of our loss.

~ from Moving the Piano (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2011)

The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place's name.

No more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,
And the aged elm, though touched with fire;
And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm:
And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

For them there was really nothing sad.
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,
One had to be versed in country things
Not to believe the phoebes wept.
 
~ Public Domain

What could be easier than learning to write?
Novels, poems, fables with and without morals,	
they’re all within you, in the heart, the head,
the bowel, the tip of the pen a diviner’s rod.
Reach inside and there they are, the people	
one knows, their scandalous comments,
the silly things they do, the unforgettable feeling
of a wet eyelash on your burning cheek.
This moment, that, an eruption of violence,	
a glancing away, the grandest of entrances,
the telling gesture, the banal and the beautiful
all conspire with feeling and passion to transport,
to deliver, to inspire.  Story emerges
from this cocoon, a crystalline moment, epiphanies
flashing like lightbulbs above the heads
of cartoon characters.  All this within you	
where you least expect it, not so much in the head
as under the arms, glistening with sweat, stinking
with the knowledge of the body, the writer
neither practitioner nor artisan but miner, digging
within himself for riches unimagined, for salt.

~ from The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2009 
(Tightrope Books, 2009)