Today there’s supposed to be a break 
This riverbend must have always been lovely. 
When you set out to find your Northwest Passage 
Burglars enter an apartment and ransack drawers; 
Consider how smart 
As dawn breaks he enters
Woolgathering afternoon:
We were knee-deep in packing paper when the cherub’s head fell off.
Saying the words My father died 
It must be easier if one believes 
The rich men, they know about suffering 
My anonymous hour opens with a prayer 
A shore of washed stones 
That a cardinal’s bright dart alights upon the branch 
I drove in snow to Clinton. 
What we don’t know we don’t know, 
You and I, when we sleep, we’re like whales 
Buster Keaton’s every move strikes 
With a wing cocked towards a lit lamp, 
             he doesn’t let the herd eat the forsythia but 
After agony had left his body to find another, 
Never the bark and abalone mask 
He limps into the barn 
A real one wouldn’t need one, 
Sometime soon after the embers cooled, 
Mr. Poe sits in Mrs. Shelton’s parlor, freshly 
We’ve come back to the site of   her
You’ve made your bed they said 
Late November afternoon. 
He struggles into his borrowed human skin, 
After I failed calculus, my father, 
There are men awed 
We can talk to one another on telephones 
Nefertiti means “The Beautiful One Has Come”
Fear passes from man to man 
When the person with the loupe was assigned 
Up the cutbank of a creek named after stone, 
I want to be the transport ship 
whose rolling eye is as loving as a mother’s. 
Kissinger in black-tie shuffles to the town car 
They came for land. For hog-high wheat to Dixon, Weeping 
In one field, husks, muscadine vines & a sugarcane graveyard furrow acres aching for the devil to beat his wife. 
At Memory Hill to spread lilies on daddy’s grave, 
Meandering Neandertals 
He walks into a thin morning 
The hummingbird hovers over bougainvillea, darting in and out 
A new “department.” A gray hive 
They will be gone by now, the blind lottery sellers of Athens, swept from the streets in time for the Olympics.
These rooms of wood, of tongue-and-groove, open out 
So the free may remain free 
At the age of ten you will be allowed 
This week the letter from my mother 
A woman writes to ask 
there are still the bad dreams I have to say 
What is mysterious about loss, 
When, as our line of divers squeezed 
A measurement of time 
It used to be that I was the prize 
“Yuck,” you heave in front of that sick boy
What walls and gables, wonders still of workmanship. 
On the radio a choir was singing 
“Peace,” says the soprano, 
The glory that has been evenly split 
On the front step my Grandpop strained to hear 
January saying summer, the news
Hide every distant thing, 
The tiny wren perched on your hand 
I spent a long time falling 
I’d cut the prologue, where God agrees 
It was clear she had carefully considered 
On the lightning-struck pin oak, 
Strung with whistle bones, frail reeds fledged, a bird 
At Uncle Li’s 
We sit by the window 
Tentative, greedy, by night they came, 
They stand scattered and not 
In woods and lakes, car boots, freezers, huts, 
I keep a little Lear in my back 
Lost in the woods with an air rifle, 
Having seared the sky, the sun—a brazier—
I remember, before the snow started, 
I awoke as from a dream. And I rose 
I was merely on 
They’ll chew you up 
The boys are hungry 
Open your bedroom window in the heart of winter.
U’s mate, O with a new root, 
Two bourbons past the funeral,
The clock in the heart of town 
My own personal map of America on the back of the airplane seat
This is the time of day we hear them coming back,
That silly retriever. 
Just wait a while and the water will run clear, 
I found a picture of you 
Here not waterfalls: scrubby plats of gorse and heather
I wake up in the dark with my head knocking 
a beautiful hours, very well 
A fingerprint on air 
You loved your daily bout 
The whole village walks the hard pack 
Spring and the come-back glow 
When I lifted my hand to brush it away, 
I had been continuing to do the same thing 
All day I have been thinking about the tide—
The little boy who snuggles next to me 
No blue beckons so much as chlorine blue, 
Whether it speaks 
A pentecost of bloom: all the furred tongues 
Yes, whales. The first time that I heard them breathing, 
Your hand on my jaw 
Let’s turn back into the blaze without shovels, let’s ask the fox 
I’m in the upper field again 
plump mother-lode of pleasure 
Jerk that bitch, urges my guide, 
The Christmas tree comes down 
Cool air arrives, sounding in high parts of the huge silvery plane tree 
the simple way the beach has 
Tonight I can’t remember why 
Continued soggy in the personal today
Body be dream 
Take two flights of stairs. 
As nomads camp where others camped before, 
Deborah wasn’t a Jew, and then 
In blunder of dusk I negotiate rush hour 
Why now do I care to look— 
All May, and everywhere
Now you’re a buddy mucking 
I sit in the garden listening 
My love is like a deep and placid lake... 
Like the Soviets, my body had a plan 
A young woman is walking with her boyfriend, and it’s deep
You are a wretch and a leech and a dirty 
Dad who thinks life is a paper bag 
“To be with a koan,”
Persistence has lent this tall white pine 
Don’t try this at home. On second thought, come in, 
A strong, pale wind on the thighs, 
I saw him as I drove by— 
October 11, 1963: 
Today, when I woke up, I asked myself 
Alone I sailed. 
What led you down, first mother, from the good 
If it’s the title of a movie, you expect 
The vultures of this landscape came to call 
A horrific scene: helpless in his passion 
Art can make war look wrong, but most of the time
knock on wood 
     Piney woods 
Rain against the roof sounds like a slow tire 
We were born in the light 
People are compelled to be together good and bad. 
We will go to God
It didn’t behave 
I needed fox    Badly I needed 
No sky                a gray backdrop merely and absence 
It’s the sort of painting I could never stand— 
Effortlessness, I learn again, 
Assume, dear vagabond, you are permitted 
Driving the mountain with the windows down 
In a nest no bigger than the breast pocket 
I’m this tiny, this statuesque, and everywhere 
The bed is fissured with shadow. 
The mourning dove’s call woke me 
The vast sadness of my family 
Here’s a plain pile of sand. 
From flowering gnarled trees 
Thank goodness we were able to wipe the Neanderthals out, beastly things, 
What he said was vast, given his limits. 
Scuba divers will sometimes drown
We dressed for church. I had a white hat
Abstain from staring too long at the sky.
A bird’s building I don’t know what
We passed the baby over the bed, and later we passed tissue,
hey music and 
Now this big westerly’s 
I’ve learned nothing. It was with me 
We’ve all been in towns
It wasn’t the river coming into me 
When Sulis rose from the open ground 
for over an hour we watched 
April 8th out my upstairs window. 
It was her first time coming home from college.
Dickey’s death feels all over me. 
You know those people who are uncomfortable 
Unreal precision of the houses at first light 
A tall slender man sits at a rolltop desk 
Honey I am one gorgeous permanent wave
                 Not pushing a rock— 
It keeps on happening again and it will
It used to be simple: 
Deep in the heart of every child, every mother, every spectator, 
Oh fire—you burn me! Ed is singing 
It’s stringy     out here
Under Eads Bridge over the Mississippi at Saint Louis 
In the portrait of Jefferson that hangs 
If memory has a center, let it be here. 
The cat purrs us awake, pawing the pillow, 
Dear Mei Ling: We don’t know how you became a self-righteous, left-wing vegan 
I saw a vast ocean on which sailed the fleets of every navy that had ever been. The ocean was still too vast for them. The fleets were specks of color on a canvas that was light and movement. Years and months fell like snowflakes.