Stephen Dobyns Poems

My stepdaughter and I circle round and round.
You see, I like the music loud, the speakers
throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether
Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so
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Over a cup of coffee or sitting on a park bench or
walking the dog, he would recall some incident
from his youth—nothing significant—climbing a tree
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These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
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Each thing I do I rush through so I can do
something else. In such a way do the days pass—
a blend of stock car racing and the never
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Pablo Neruda stands on a corner next to a poster
advertising quick weight loss diet aids when I
happen by with half my creative writing class.
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At the ocean he studied the waves—how they built and broke, their
regularity and variety. It seemed meaningful, yet no meaning came to
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Sometimes confusion was a veil across his eyes. Then what he loved
became suspect, what he had disliked he now despised. Colors grew
darker, sounds sharper. In his blindness, he trusted nothing and he
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The clouds above the mountains of Mexico—how palpable they
were, towering expanses of particles of water, layer upon layer of
overlays of white, brighter than white as if lit from within, mountainous
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Heart is lonely so he buys a bird.
He lugs the bird all over in a silver cage.
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Those patches of cold air on the far side
of the barn at night or down the hill
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