Robert B. Shaw Poems

Why, I sometimes wonder, out of all
the spirited conceptions of my Maker,
am I the chosen one? Reprinted ceaselessly,
...

The wormy apple tree
we chainsawed to a stump
is not content to be
a barren amputee.
...

She left. And still, he sat and wrote about
how he could not live with her nor without.
Hatred and love contended in his lyric.
Whichever won, the victory was Pyrrhic.
...

It will be recognizable: your neighborhood,
with of course some of the bigger trees
gone for pulp and the more upscale houses
sporting new riot-proof fencing which
...

This tuber's dark protuberance aches to be
above ground, where there's so much more to see,
...

The evil eye, enshrined and multiplied,
fanned out and flaunted in the strut of pride?
...

Everything has a center. This is yours:
here, after all those savage slamming doors,

your inner sanctum of dumbfounding quiet,
...

Not often now in flower or in word
is day's eye even dimly seen or heard.
...

Taut, industrious little drum
tensed in the hollow of my wrist,
beating alert beneath my thumb,
nature ordains that you persist.
...

When I was small and went to bed
the ceiling sloped above my head.

The room was dark, the curtain thin.
I saw the headlights hurtle in
...