Does it torment you
not to see
what transpires, exactly,
Gone
I want to die like a white peony
yielding all my light
to the dark and holy ground I once
Halloween
We who were children rode a great sweep
of release in October as leaves
left autumn’s trees. For once
Misreading Chinese Poetry
The third night I wake
at half past three and decide
the moon is too sharp
Fill Vessel with Love, a Villanelle
Release offenses, abandon locked doors,
empty grudge buckets, remove mulish gloves—
To fend for resentment nets nothing but war.
Fundamentals of Acting
“A bowl of oatmeal,” I answer
when my acting teacher asks,
“What are you?”
Forty-niners
Born in the midst of a boom,
we struck it rich,
mined the lode of free love,
I forgive your cat, now mine
who wakes me every day at 4 a.m.
demanding breakfast.
Nurse Log
The cedar stump that held
my father’s, the professor’s, cocktails,
he would be glad to know,
Passages
Not far from the leaning
Jesus, Who wraps
Himself around
Rewound
They’re lived in four-minute snippets
the past made present with notes
from a now silent guitar and
Rubberband Man
For him, being extremely pliable
is the élastique de la élastique.
He relishes being twisted so tightly
March in Tucson
On Saturday a late snow
frosted the desert. By mid-morning,
roof melt rained in torrents overhead.
Questions for a Monarch
When you scratch the leaf
with your barbed legs,
what scent wafts to your antennae,
Swimming Lessons, Test Day
Across the pool, watching you ready
for your final test, I see you, my daughter,
as you were inside me; waiting, unborn,
Fall Light
Though the sky is perfectly blue and sunny
the leaves keep turning; nothing can stop their
quest for gold. And we know where that leads —
Aging Out
Now that we’ve moved past -maid,
we like to call ourselves
merhags—cackling in
The Longing of Aaron Rosand's Violin
You think I want this adulation?
This reverence, worship, adoration?
All I can think of is fiddling, jigging,
One Night
One night you will wake suddenly
and descend the stairs aware of a presence,
and passing through the rooms and finding none
Transformation
I am longing for down time
Haven’t you had enough already?