Ross Cohen Poems

I could never compete with you
Lightfoot, skipping across the moss
and stone.
I crashed through tangled woods,
...

Grackle,
You’ve murdered brother crow
And stolen his totem spot
Atop our local mythology.
...

The sea turns youth into an aged thing:
Wood worked by Protean hands, strong lines
Changed into faded and level grain.
White rings surround a browned
...

After the apple’s plucked from the tree, and upkicked clay dust settles,
Two lovers sit: somber, engaged with shame, drinking bodies on a higher level.

Running from calamity, fugitives from languor and bliss,
...

Cairn-filled, rock crag, grackle-sound in sunken stonework.
Lost are bearings, lost the sure footings I set
Down before this: a broken quarry
Chock-full of broken
...

The key is to get all things plumb and level.
All that sand down and bevel
-ing is prelude to the squaring,
Though it’s only natural
...

And then the flags were raised
Blades of grass catching the wind.
And we gathered underneath, each
A yeoman beneath his standard.
...

After the Thanksgiving
Meal, we pressed the cane.

The stripped stalks were cut;
...