The loop of rusty cable incises …
Reginald Gibbons
My father came down not killed …
The thick-walled room’s cave-darkness, …
Standing, leaning, with both long- …
Down in the blue-green water …
Something needs to be done—like dragging a big black plastic sack through the upstairs rooms, emptying into it each waste basket, the trash of three lives for a week or so. I am careful and slow about it, so that this little chore will banish the big ones. But I leave the bag lying on the floor and I go into my daughter’s bedroom, into the north morning light from her windows, and while this minute she is at school counting or spelling a first useful word I sit down on her unmade bed and I look out the windows at nothing for a while, the unmoving buildings—houses and a church—in the cold street. …
I am sure I do …
Sleepless …
A last formality is …
The children are eating lunch at home on a summer weekday when a man comes to the door and asks their mother if she has anything that needs fixing or carrying or any yardwork he can do. They chew their food a little dreamily as, with her back straight and her voice carefully polite, she says No, thank you, I’m sorry, and the man goes away. Who was that, Mama? they say. Oh, no one, she says. …
Someone has left us now …
Imagining, on a long walk …
Where moonlight angles …
Coleridge carefully wrote down a whole page …
A cylinder of maple …