If You Should Visit
Cameo With Miniature Landscape
Chinese Horse
Later Reflections
Eating Dandelions
Half Sonnet

If You Should Visit

You would find the lone birch
peeling white bark,
deep red and some-
times paler yellow,
as much
like a crab leg
as nothing else.

(published in The Quarterly, Number 31, Fall 1995)

Cameo with Miniature Landscape

I want you to know that your stories
are not less beautiful now
because I have ceased to believe them.
Rather, they unfold
like Chinese stories on scrolls,
a leisurely entertainment for those mornings
when I am too weak to fall from my bed.
I unwind

          another inch or two
of parchment,
muse on the significance
of this or that ideogram,
and with a little effort I am able
to see through the bay window
persimmons dropping in the near garden.
Skaters on the more distant pond
glide in rapt silence.

(published in Hanging Loose Press, #69, 1996)

Chinese Horse

In the mouth of the cavern
coarse hemp grows.
Rough pigments of the Chinese horse
stratify the stone.

Her simple lines do not denote
viaduct or buttress. Lithe and elegant
     still she is
          forever bending
     at her shoulders
forward.

(published in Phase and Cycle, Vol. IX, No. 2, Fall-Winter 1996)

Later Reflections

A narrow stream curved just
beyond the mill where dull
blue surface swelled suddenly
among green fields fat
with snakes. Late summer the grain
cut bare chests like switches

racing dogs to the river
bank. First would swing
from coarse vine arching
breathless sky to penetrate
clouds floating on water's skin.
My feet sank slowly in cool

black mud. I watched reflected
wavering figures balanced
on distant rock. Lowering
in dark currents, damp
flesh hugs sharp stone, mouth
kissing bright moss.

(published in Plainsongs, Vol. 16, No. 1, Fall 1995)

Eating Dandelions

Near the farmers' market, three
Amish girls in deep blue
dresses and black bonnets
stand whispering together,
slowly pulling the green stems
through their small teeth.

(published in Hanging Loose Press, Number 69, 1996)

Half Sonnet,

beginning with a line from the New York Times
During El Niņo anchovies perish.
Gilt fishermen stretch their nets in long barns
Far from the shore. Their craft in dry storage,
They cluster near sandbars where sea-bound terns
Prod the rotting remains of minnow, chub,
And worms. Unbuoyed, this face of the Christ child,
Worn smooth like wheat cents or glass shards long sub-
          Merged

(published in Lilliput Review, Number 98, July 1998)

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