[Moodpomes: Calendar of Correlatives]
Chalks of birch
lambent, lean
...
Mocked by a carnival mirror,
a contortion cruel as doubt,
I wrecked the woozy image:
a snicker clinked out.
...
I traced his tracks in crunching snow,
printed crisply under the solemn pines:
they left a trail like doubt in doubt—
shuffling in murk, as if for signs.
...
Churning in a spiral shell,
a monotone of waves
rolls from a mouth of opal
into memory’s caves
...
[Moodpomes: Calendar of Correlatives]
At twilight scrawny starlings screech
like harpies hunting empty streets,
...
Candle Power in Intensive Care
The unction cools my brow, the candle shines
and forms a line of sacramental brede;
the priest half-chants the text, and makes the signs,
...
Epochal Bells
I
In synagogues of cedar hills
weathered shepherds prayed
...
I had to break my
promise—marigolds,
yellow pompons fat
...
(For Cornelius Patrick Dougherty)
Piebald pigeons waddle about the bench
The old man takes beneath an elm to hunch
...
Year by year the pond
puckered into marsh,
stifling the orange carp
...