Julia Copus Poems

We left before I had time
to comfort you, to tell you that we nerly touched
hands in that vacuous half-dark. I wanted
...

We don't fall in love: it rises through us
the way that certain music does -
whether a symphony or ballad -
...

At length we learned what it meant to "come to" grief.
As if grief lay in wait for us all along,
a barricade or boulder in the road.
What was it pulled us to it - led as we were
...

Even human tissue's made of atoms,
bits of energy in cyclic motion:
our skin and cells and vital organs
are a lattice-work of small vibrations,
...

Gather round: I've a tale to tell.
If you've ears to hear, then listen well.

In the frosty lanes of alley cats;
...

More and more, lately, when absence thickened the air
at the schoolgates, in the street, first thing on waking,
she'd think of her former calling, the way it had defined her.
In the dim, sugar-paper blur of the light,
...

aleontologists treasure the rare geological circumstances that permit an occasional preservation of soft parts. - Stephen Jay Gould

Perhaps there is some transcendental place,
...

I. The Art of Illumination

At times it is a good life, with the evening sun
gilding the abbey tower, the brook's cold waters
...

That was the house where you asked me to remain
on the eve of my planned departure. Do you remember?
The house remembers it - the deal table
with the late September sun stretched on its back.
...

We left before I had time
to comfort you, to tell you that we nearly touched
hands in that vacuous half-dark. I wanted
to stem the burning waters running over me like tiny
...