Poems
Bridge in Rain
After Gapstow Bridge,
first designed by Jacob Wrey Mould;
re-designed by John Galen Howard and Samuel Caudwell
How long would it take? Dipped brush
on square paper swath with a clear intent
to let the river run under to the bush
of soft live foliage. The strokes were meant
by the architect to keep shadow and light
paced and swirling, like the bridge, bent
as the mind is moved quick but slight
and sharp—a perfect plan. But a puddle
formed in every rain, day and night,
and all the traffic split the middle
path of wood, by uncounted footprints.
Awash in monochrome, there’s no huddle
now, no bustling through a spray of tints.
Here, at another rain’s fall, there’s no breach.
Ornate spiked past is replaced by simple stone.
No cast-iron railings arch, famed reach
to open sky. Just a low-key lasting one.
From Poems at Half Past Three
The Gardener
Slaw-seed, my hands pull down to dirt
that waits right under me, dry for water.
Ground keeps tugging the cuffs of my shirt,
that I refuse to roll up. But I’m here. My daughter
is the one who gardens. She’s the one who stays
with rows of seeds until they peek and bloom
green shelter for some pillbugs or a mantis. Say
that I might dwell with them, with her, with room
for torn up grass and fairies in my heart.
Say that I might come without pretense,
without some work so urgent still to start.
And say that now I understand the sense
she made when she made me kneel down
next to her, upon this wanting mother ground.
From Days Layers
previously published in Dappled Things
On the Satisfaction That Comes from All
That’s Concrete, Staid, and Complete
Here’s an assignment for tonight . . . [do it, but then] Tear it up. . .
You will find you have already been gloriously rewarded . . .
in becoming. . .
—a letter from Kurt Vonnegut
to Xavier High School Students, November 5, 2006
The rumbling of earth's sweetness made a hive
—amber fire inside my cumbersome dignity,
and there one was, next to me, holding my dive
to coordinates neither nearer borough nor next tree,
sweetness extent only in nerve-stars, first one dart
flying, falling to its destination, then another, one constellation,
then another, always unreliably, always the start
of something, never the whole, and here I am for the ministration
of a part, how the role lays, so much still unfinished
From Poems at Half Past Three