May 2007

Our fathers have formed a poetry workshop.
They sit in a circle of disappointment over our fastballs
and wives. We thought they didn't read our stuff,
whole anthologies of poems that begin, My father never,
or those that end, and he...

Did we live lightly then?
Twice we've seen the fox,
the flash
of red that leaps
the weeds and brush, an after-
image gray,

then blank, then gone
delight cannot be sought
or pleasure thought
or joy re-caught
but twice we saw the fox, not once,
and knew his fear...

Consider the adhesiveness of things
       to the ghosts that prized them,
the "olden days" of birthday spoons
       and silver napkin rings.
Too carelessly I opened
       that velvet drawer of heirlooms.
There lay my grandmother's soul
begging under...