James Galvin Poems

All the angels of Tie Siding were on fire.
The famous sky was gone.

Presumably the mountains were still there, invisible in haze.
OK,
...

Very sad,
Having to
Come out of nowhere,
...

The more I see of people, the more I like my dog.
And this would be good country if a man could eat scenery.

The lake's ice gives light back to the air,
...

Some little splinter
Of shadow purls
And weals down
The slewed stone
Chapel steps,
...

My grandfather was always sad. Sadly, as a boy, he paddled his canoe along the beautiful Hudson River, which was only then beginning to die. During the first war he was very sad in France because he knew he was having the time of his life. When it was over everyone in American felt like a hero — imagine.
...

A canoe made of horse ribs tipped over in the pasture.
Prairie flowers took it for a meetinghouse.
They grow there with a vengeance.
...

We remember so little,
We are certain of nothing.
We long to perish into the absolute.
Where is a mountain
To spread its snowfields for us like a shawl?
...

On starless, windless nights like this
I imagine
I can hear the wedding dresses
Weeping in their closets,
Luminescent with hopeless longing,
...

No one can draw fast enough
To capture the cut
Iris before its form falls
From its former self.
...

To keep from ending
The story does everything it can,
Careful not to overvalue
Perfection or undervalue
...