As a teenager I became aware
of a need to talk to myself.
I talked on paper, on and on.
I do it to this day, paper and screen.
Strange then, strange now,
to choose the white loneliness
over the gathering next door,
the air scented with lilacs
and barbecue, with laughing.
Strange then, strange now,
that language wants
to be alone with me.
*
Cages for Unknown Animals
That’s what I build, trapping only
shadows of their mystery, traps I abandon
since shadows also escape them.
I study the places where darkness collects—
always cageless, always camouflaged—
to see what goes there to drink.
Poems should be made of nothing
but truth and mystery, but either
truth or mystery usually escapes.
*
What’s Wrong with Me
The end of the world
is not what’s wrong with me.
Old age, illness, and death
are not wrong. They just are.
A stone says, Wake up,
exactly this is all there is!
Everything says it—
a sick coyote crossing the field,
poisoned, injured, rabid, old,
the rest of the pack anxious,
yipping and howling back and forth
across the valley as dusk comes on.
What’s wrong with me is that
I find their music beautiful.
I dwell on it long after it stops
and in the silence afterward
I write down its words.
*
First Love
Not a heron in wetland, unmoving.
Not that pure. Closer to a jay
sidestepping his way along a branch,
checking out the feeder below.
Still closer to the ravenous
starlings that drive away
all the other birds.
*
Her Ashes
I touched them, her ashes,
when we gathered by the Atlantic’s
cold green-gray concussions
to free her, handful by handful,
from the form she had taken in the world.
She was silky and gritty and purified.
I had to rinse her ghost from my hands.
Contents List
THINGS AS IT IS (2018)
The Ghost of Tom
18 Strangers’ Houses
19 The Missing Weekly Readers
20 Maverick
21 Spiral
22 Snapshot with Eyes Turned Away
23 A Red-hot X
24 The Children's Prison
25 Burning Leaves
26 The Hill Towns of Connecticut
28 Downstairs in Dreams
29 The Cloisters
30 The Ghost of Tom
32 Soft Leather Reins
33 Lederhosen
35 Radio Silence
36 Dark Slides
38 Private Ceremony
39 First Boyfriend
40 My Bob Dylan
41 Early Winter Wilderness
42 Sad Song
43 Graveyard of Imaginary Selves
Earth Without Humans
47 Before the Ash
48 Cloud Seeding
49 The Ends of the World
52 Booby-trapped Weapons
53 The Background
54 After Snow
55 Crickets at the End of the World
56 A Strange Little Animal
57 Earth without Humans
58 The New Dark Ages
59 Tiny White Spirals
60 Herds of Humans
61 Birdsong
62 Keene Valley Elegy
64 What the Trees Said
Always Elsewhere
66 A Pond in Japan
67 Mom’s Party
68 The Portors
69 In One Ear
70 The Uphill River
71 Mom’s Playthings
72 The Lullabies of Elsewhere
73 No Blue Allowed
74 Bermuda Sand
75 Mom Looking Skinny
77 Mom’s Red Convertible
78 Babylon at Stonehenge
80 The Floatisphere
81 Movies of Mountains
82 Handwriting’s Ancestors
83 The Words of His Dementia
84 Ermine Tails
86 Animals Not Initials
87 The M-sound
88 Her Ashes
Roadkill
90 You, Reader, as I Imagine You
91 Cages for Unknown Animals
92 Nothing
93 Roadkill
94 Invisible Fence
95 Spaciousness
96 Zazen
97 Never
98 The Second Arrow
100 Silence vs. Music
101 Labradorite
102 Sickness and Medicine
103 Path of Red Leaves
104 Early Snow
105 Days of Not-knowing
106 I Keep Scaring Myself
107 Falling Leaves
108 Nan’s Stick
109 Fox Bones
110 Two Dogs Passing Through the Yard
Now’s Dream
113 The Park from Above
114 The Feeder of Strays
115 Bipolar II-ity
116 The Duck Boat
117 Buzzyboy
119 A River in Egypt
120 Ghost Dress
121 The Phantoms for Which Clothes Are Designed
122 Murder and Mayhem in Miami
123 The Wrong House
124 Fireworks or Gunfire?
125 Ancient Questions
126 Now’s Dream
127 What’s Wrong with Me
128 Toygers
129 Plain American
130 Things as It Is
131 Kensho of Ash
132 Winter Crows
133 Fast Stars
THE WORLD IT WAS (2026)
Pandemic Summer
138 The View From the Porch
139 A Chittering Family of Raccoons
140 Dan’s Music
141 Who Cooks for You?
143 The Trail to Who Knows Where
144 Game Camera
145 Poetryland
146 First Love
147 The Still-Wild Lakes of Canada
148 The Trade-off
149 Speed and Shortcuts
150 The World It Was
151 God Violence
152 God Blindness
153 Goodbye
154 Snow Squall
Invisible Horse
156 Invisible Horse
157 How Canada Geese Became Holy
158 The Eyes Behind the Eyes
159 My Other Illness
160 Stop It
161 Centaur
162 Pony Ride
163 The Mind-Body Problem
164 Tin Cup
165 The Old Mare
166 Featherweight
168 Geometry Mistake
169 Little Ghost
174 Snow in Childhood
Death’s Hors d’Oeuvres
176 My Illness
177 What My Illness Said to Me
178 The Fringes
179 Small Sting
180 Little Slur of Fat
181 Small Anxieties
182 What I Like
183 The Fulcrum
184 Our Cyberhood
185 The History of My Handwriting
186 The Stone Age
187 Snake
188 Death’s Hors d’Oeuvres
189 Death’s Precincts
190 Dream Time
191 Uh-Oh, Uh-Oh
192 I Can’t Make Sense of It
193 Liar to Self
194 My Diorama
195 Pastoral with Cemeteries
196 Flower of False Starts
Solitaire
198 First Numbness
199 Reckless
200 Elegy
201 The Second Year
202 September or October
203 The Elegy Inside
204 A Loneliness
205 Takusei
206 Solitaire
207 The Fat God
208 Ghost of a Summer Dinner
209 No Music
210 His Absence
211 The After
212 The Show
213 The Name of the Pain
214 Old Love
215 The Fact
216 A Regret
