Timothy Steele Poems

The garden where he broods is like a riddle.
The circle of the gravel walk,
The sundial which is stationed in the middle,
A poppy on its hairy stalk:
...

Your sleep is so profound
This room seems a recess
Awaiting consciousness.
Gauze curtains, drawn around
...

I bring Fae flowers. When I cross the street,
She meets and gives me lemons from her tree.
As if competitors in a Grand Prix,
The cars that speed past threaten to defeat
...

Angered, may I be near a glass of water;
May my first impulse be to think of Silence,
Its deities (who are they? do, in fact, they
Exist? etc.).
...

Above the concourse, from a beam,
A little warbler pours forth song.
Beneath him, hurried humans stream:
Some draw wheeled suitcases along
...

The nominalist in me invents
A life devoid of precedents.
The realist takes a different view:
He claims that all I feel and do
...

At dawn, down in the streets, from pavement grills,
Steam rises like the spent breath of the night.
At open windows, curtains stir on sills;
There's caging drawn across a market's face;
...

Even in fortunate times,
The nectar is spiked with woe.
Gods are incorrigibly
Capricious, and the needy
...

As my Scotch, spared the water, blondly sloshes
About its tumbler, and gay manic flame
Is snapping in the fireplace, I grow youthful:
I realize that calendars aren't truthful
...