(Dreams drain the spirit if we dream too long.)

What’s madness but nobility of soulAt odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!I know the purity of pure despair,My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,That place among the rocks–is it a cave,Or winding path? The...

I do not laugh; I do not cry;I’m sweating out the will to die.My past is sliding down the drain;I soon will be myself again.

from The AuctionI left my home with unencumbered willAnd all the rubbish of confusion sold.

My Papa’s Waltz:The whiskey on your breathCould make a small boy dizzy;But I hung on like death:Such waltzing was not easy.We romped until the pansSlid from the kitchen shelf;My mother’s countenanceCould not unfrown itself.The hand...

Be sure that whatever you are is you.

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going whereI have to go…..Great Nature has another thing to doTo you and me,...

Self-contemplation is a curseThat makes an old confusion worse.

The MistakeHe left his pants upon a chair:She was a widow, so she said:But he was apprehended, bare,By one who rose up from the dead.

I’ve recovered my tenderness by long looking;I’m a Socrates of small fury.The waves bends with the fish. I’m taughtAs water teaches stone. Believe me, extremest oriole,I can hear light on a dry day.The world is...

I learned not to fear infinity,The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,The wheel turning away from itself,The sprawl of the wave,The on-coming water.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

I trust all joy

Love makes me naked;Propinquity’s a harsh master;O the songs we hide singing to ourselves!

May my silences become more accurate.

My father is a fish.

from Open HouseMy truths are all foreknown,This anguish self-revealed.I’m naked to the bone,With nakedness my shield.Myself is what I wear:I keep the spirit spare.

A wave of Time hangs motionless on this particular shore.I notice a tree, arsenical grey in the light, or the slowWheel of the stars, the Great Bear glittering colder than snow,And remember there was something...

Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.

When true love broke my heart in half,I took the whiskey from the shelf,And told my neighbors when to laugh.I keep a dog, and bark myself.

The GeraniumWhen I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,She looked so limp and bedraggled,So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,Or a wizened aster in late September,I brought her back in againFor a...

The WakingI wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.I learn by going where I have to go.We think by feeling. What is there to know?I hear...

The stones were sharp,The wind came at my back;Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.

Love alters all. Unblood my instinct, love.

By daily dying, I have come to be.

What grace I have is enough.