Time to rest now; you have had
enough excitement for the time being.

Twilight, then early evening. Fireflies
in the room, flickering here and there, here and there,
and summer's deep sweetness filling the open window.

Don't think of these things anymore.
Listen to my breathing, your own breathing
like the fireflies, each small breath
a flare in which the world appears.

I've sung to you long enough in the summer night.
I'll win you over in the end; the world can't give you
this sustained vision.

You must be taught to love me. Human beings must be
   taught to love
silence and darkness.

~ from The Wild Iris (Eccobooks, 1992)

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)Jesse never felt smarter than at age six the only first grader in a fifth-grade poetry workshop— when they wrote about their neighborhood his poem by far the best in the room and he the first volunteer to stand and read it. The big kids clapped for him and cheered. He remembered this at twenty-one when we crossed paths on Commerce Street. Hey, hey! Could I ever feel like that again? It was my Best Day! Now working two jobs two kids to support Yes I think so Do you read to your kids? Do you have a library card? Do you use it? No No No Start there, Jesse! You knew the truth when you were six that your street was magical and full of mountains though it was utterly flat. You wrote about the rooster’s songs and the dog’s barkingful wonder. You wrote Who do you think I am am am? And knew instinctively it was more powerful to say “am” three times than one— You are still that person. ~ from Voices in the Air (Greenwillow Books, 2018)

They keep to themselves,
no soft breath on our necks,
no shadowy form by a window.

Sometimes they hide in our dreams
like a face deep in a foggy mirror
or a faded watercolour.

A butterfly in the kitchen,
a robin by the back door,
grief makes us desperate.

We pluck weeds from their graves,
humped from our weighty backpacks
of ‘could haves’ and ‘should haves’,

while above our heads
starlight comes tumbling
through the vast indifference of eternity.

~ in The Irish Times, July 2021

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)I stalked her in the grocery store: her crown of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip, her erect bearing, radiating tenderness, watching the way she placed yogurt and avocados in her basket, beaming peace like the North Star. I wanted to ask, "What aisle did you find your serenity in, do you know how to be married for fifty years or how to live alone, excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to possess some knowledge that makes the earth turn and burn on its axis—" But we don’t request such things from strangers nowadays. So I said, "I love your hair." ~ This poem was displayed on transit buses in Portland, Oregon, as part of that city’s "Poetry in Motion" program

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs 
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, 
The night above the dingle starry, 
Time let me hail and climb 
Golden in the heydays of his eyes, 
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns 
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves 
Trail with daisies and barley 
Down the rivers of the windfall light. 

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns 
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, 
In the sun that is young once only, 
Time let me play and be 
Golden in the mercy of his means, 
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves 
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly 
In the pebbles of the holy streams. 

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay 
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery 
And fire green as grass. 
And nightly under the simple stars 
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away, 
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses 
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white 
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all 
Shining, it was Adam and maiden, 
The sky gathered again 
And the sun grew round that very day. 
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light 
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable 
On to the fields of praise. 

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house 
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, 
In the sun born over and over, 
I ran my heedless ways, 
My wishes raced through the house high hay 
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows 
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs 
Before the children green and golden 
Follow him out of grace. 

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, 
In the moon that is always rising, 
Nor that riding to sleep 
I should hear him fly with the high fields 
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. 
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, 
Time held me green and dying 
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

~from The Poems of Dylan Thomas (New Directions 1938- 1971)

Guilt is a bag someone has carried 
up the hill from the pub.  A brown bag
the size of a good catch, or
darkish, and bigger than that:
duffel over the shoulder.

Guilt is a pool with ladders 
rising in every direction.
We climb and fall back and climb again.
Who can make the connection between 
what snaps underfoot and what drenches us?

We are not taught how to do nothing.
We’re dragged from our busy infancy 
and distracted for years till our
balloon of competence shreds.
There are secrets you know, 

there is what happens when
what you haven’t imagined occurs.
Pain or its absence.  Wind 
bares the back of a sparrow’s head
underneath its buffer of down.

I believe in birds, the smallness of them, 
their potential for flight, the way
they acknowledge this, even so

nodding and feeding in front of us.

~ from Double Somersaults (Brick Books, 1999)

My grandfather was a bird. Underneath his white hair he wore crayon-coloured feathers. They were of broiling gold and of burning red and of drowning blue. One was green the colour of a single blade of grass. When he walked ahead of me I could see from his stride how he flew in the branches of trees. When his hand curled in my hair I could feel him perching around me. When he worked on the end of a shovel I found how his arms spread wide in a turn. And when he stood over a bed full of flowers I saw that his eyes gathered what shone on the ground for his nest. When he was gone I remember him sitting in a tree in a garden which he had planted. And all the cries of morning were around him. ~ From The Art of Walking Upright (Steele Roberts Ltd, 1999)

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)I went out of the schoolhouse fast and through the gardens and to the woods, and spent all summer forgetting what I’d been taught— two times two, and diligence, and so forth, how to be modest and useful, and how to succeed and so forth, machines and oil and plastic and money and so forth. By fall I had healed somewhat, but was summoned back to the chalky rooms and the desk, to sit and remember the way the river kept rolling its pebbles, the way the wild wrens sang though they hadn’t a penny in the bank, the way the flowers were dressed in nothing but light. ~ from Devotions (Penguin Books 2020)

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)It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquility; The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the sea: Listen! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder—everlastingly. Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine: Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year, And worship’st at the Temple’s inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not. ~ 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)Remember how we used to do it— weaving through the crowd, brushing shoulders, fingers touching a sleeve, adjusting a lapel—first an old friend here, then turn to banter with a stranger, finding odd connections—“You’re from where?...You know her!”—going deeper into story there, leaning back in wonder, bending close to whisper, secrets hidden in the hubbub, as if in the middle of this melee you have found a room and lit a lamp… then the roar of the crowd comes back, someone singing out a name, another bowing with a shriek of laughter, slap on the back, bear hug void of fear? Imagine! Just imagine. ~ from Singer Come From Afar (Red Hen Press 2021)

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)Why does this written doe bound through these written woods? For a drink of written water from a spring whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle? Why does she lift her head; does she hear something? Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth, she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips. Silence - this word also rustles across the page and parts the boughs that have sprouted from the word "woods." Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page, are letters up to no good, clutches of clauses so subordinate they'll never let her get away. Each drop of ink contains a fair supply of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights, prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment, surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns. They forget that what's here isn't life. Other laws, black on white, obtain. The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say, and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities, full of bullets stopped in mid-flight. Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so. Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall, not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop. Is there then a world where I rule absolutely on fate? A time I bind with chains of signs? An existence become endless at my bidding? The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand. ~ from Poems New and Collected (Mariner Books, 2001) Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

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)i often daydream about the woman i’ll be when i leave the rush of my insecure twenties and pick up self-assurance on the way i can’t wait to make my eighteen-year-old self jealous of the hell i raise roaring into my thirty and forties my soul becoming more potent with age at fifty i’ll sit with my wrinkles and silver hair laughing about the adventures we’ve had together talking about the countless more in the decades ahead what a privilege it is to grow into the finest version of myself ~ from home body (Simon & Schuster, 2020)

In this country, Jamaica is not quite as far 
as you might think. Walking through Peckham
in London, West Moss Road in Manchester, 
you pass green and yellow shops 
where tie-headwomen bargain over the price 
of dasheen. And beside Jamaica is Spain 
selling large yellow peppers, lemon to squeeze 
onto chicken. Beside Spain is Pakistan, then Egypt, 
Singapore, the world ... here, strangers build home 
together, flood the ports with curry and papayas; 
in Peckham and on Moss road, the place smells 
of more than just patty or tandoori. It smells like 
Mumbai, like Castries, like Princess Street, Jamaica. 
Sometimes in this country, the only thing far away 
is this country.

~ from Border Lines, Poems of Migration (Alfred A Knopf, 2020)In this country, Jamaica is not quite as far  as you might think. Walking through Peckham in London, West Moss Road in Manchester,  you pass green and yellow shops  where tie-headwomen bargain over the price  of dasheen. And beside Jamaica is Spain  selling large yellow peppers, lemon to squeeze  onto chicken. Beside Spain is Pakistan, then Egypt,  Singapore, the world ... here, strangers build home  together, flood the ports with curry and papayas;  in Peckham and on Moss road, the place smells  of more than just patty or tandoori. It smells like  Mumbai, like Castries, like Princess Street, Jamaica.  Sometimes in this country, the only thing far away  is this country.  ~ from Border Lines, Poems of Migration (Alfred A Knopf, 2020)

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)Rest, now. Let the weight you run from every day now draw you down. Later there will be more time to tend to everything left undone Now, rest. Fall into your own bones lying horizontal on this ground. Come into your dark corners. Come into this original nakedness under all the layers. Come where all your losses split you open. Don't rise, yet -- rest. Be drawn deeper down into the salt tide of tears. Let grief wash you, then drown you beyond the name you were first given, when you reached to touch your own mother's face for the very first time, and she smiled her light down into you. Now reach those same fingers for the face of infinity -- so that, opening your eyes, you will know the one dreaming you is pleased with you, that everything seen is your self, and that now is the time to rise wholehearted into the work aching to be animated by precisely you. ~ from Bury The Seed (Performance Integral, 2020)

Though my mother was already two years dead Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas, put hot water bottles her side of the bed and still went to renew her transport pass. You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone. He'd put you off an hour to give him time to clear away her things and look alone as though his still raw love were such a crime. He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief though sure that very soon he'd hear her key scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief. He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea. I believe life ends with death, and that is all. You haven't both gone shopping; just the same, in my new black leather phone book there's your name and the disconnected number I still call. ~ from Poems of Healing (Alfred A Knopf, Everyman’s Library, 2021)

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)He was about four, I think... it was so long ago. In a garden; he'd done some damage behind a bright screen of sweet-peas - snapped a stalk, a stake, I don't recall, but the grandmother came and saw, and asked him "Did you do that?" Now, if she'd said why did you do that, he'd never have denied it. She showed him he had a choice. I could see in his face the new sense, the possible. That word and deed need not match, that you could say the world different, to suit you. When he said "No", I swear it was as moving as the first time a baby's fist clenches on a finger, as momentous as the first taste of fruit. I could feel his eyes looking through a new window, at a world whose form and colour weren't fixed but fluid, that poured like a snake, trembled around the edges like northern lights, shape-shifted at the spell of a voice. I could sense him filling like a glass, hear the unreal sea in his ears. This is how to make songs, create men, paint pictures, tell a story. I think I made up the screen of sweet-peas. Maybe they were beans, maybe there was no screen: it just felt as if there should be, somehow. And he was my - no, I don't need to tell that. I know I made up the screen. And I recall very well what he had done ~ from The Beautiful Lie (Seren 2002)

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)If you ask me, us takes in undulations – each wave in the sea, all insides compressed – as if, from one coast, you could reach out to the next; and maybe it’s a Midlands thing but when I was young, us equally meant me, says the one, ‘Oi, you, tell us where yer from’; and the way supporters share the one fate – I, being one, am Liverpool no less – cresting the Mexican wave of we or us, a shore-like state, two places at once, God knows what’s in it; and, at opposite ends my heart’s sunk at separations of us. When it comes to us, colour me unsure. Something in me, or it, has failed the course. I’d love to think I could stretch to it – us – but the waves therein are too wide for words. I hope you get, here, where I’m coming from. I hope you’re with me on this – between love and loss – where I’d give myself away, stranded as if the universe is a matter of one stress. Us. I hope, from here on, I can say it and though far-fetched, it won’t be too far wrong. ~ from Border Lines, Poems of Migration (Alfred A Knopf, 2020)

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) Tibetan Buddhist maxim And yet, wouldn't it be welcome at the end of each ordinary day? The audience could be small, the theater modest. Folding chairs in a church basement would do. …Just a short earnest burst of applause that you got up that morning and, one way or the other, made it through the day. You soaped up in the steaming shower, drank your Starbucks in the car, and let the guy with the Windex wipe your windshield during the long red light at Broad Street. Or maybe you were that guy, not daring to light up while you stood there because everyone's so down on smoke these days. Or you kissed your wife as she hurried out the door, even though you were pretty sure she was meeting her lover at the Flamingo Motel, even though you wanted to grab her by a hank of her sleek hair. Maybe your son's in jail. Your daughter's stopped eating. And your husband's still dead this morning, just like he was yesterday and the day before that. And yet you put on your shoes and take a walk, and when a neighbor says Good morning, you say Good morning back. Would a round of applause be amiss? Even if you weren't good. If you yelled at your kid, poisoned the ants, drank too much and said that really stupid thing you promised yourself you wouldn't say. Even if you don't deserve it. ~ from The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007)

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)Today I was awakened by strong coffee and the awareness that the earth is busy with whales even though we can’t see any unless we have embarked on a whale watch, which would be disappointing if we still couldn’t see any. I can see the steam rising from my yellow cup, the usual furniture scattered about, and even some early light filtering through the palms. Meanwhile, thousands of whales are cruising along at various speeds under the seas, crisscrossing one another, slaloming in and out of the Gulf Stream, some with their calves traveling alongside—such big blunt heads they have! So is it too much to ask that one day a year be set aside for keeping in mind while we step onto a bus, consume a ham sandwich, or stoop to pick up a coin from a sidewalk the multitude of these mammoth creatures coasting between the continents, some for the fun of it, others purposeful in their journeys, all concealed under the sea, unless somewhere one breaks the surface with an astonishing upheaval of water and all the people in yellow slickers rush to one side of the boat to pint and shout and wonder how to tell their friends about the day they saw a whale? ~ from Whale Day (Random House, 2020)

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)I visit the grocery store like the Indian woman in Peru attends the cathedral. Saying a few words over and over; butter, bread, apples, butter bread apples. I nod to the grandmothers muttering among roots. Their carts tell stories: they eat little, they live alone. Last week two women compared their cancers matter-of-factly as I compare soups. How do you reach that point of acceptance? Life and death shoved in the same basket and you with a calm face waiting at the checkout stand. We must bless ourselves with peaches. Pray to the eggplant, silent among her sisters , that the seeds will not be bitter on her tongue. Confess our fears to the flesh of tomato: we go forward only halfway ripened dreaming of the deeper red. ~ from Everything Comes Next (Greenwillow Books, 2020) ~ from @MosabAbuToha