February 2008

On nights like this we used to swim in the quarry,
the boys making up games requiring them to tear off  the girls’ clothes
and the girls cooperating, because they had new bodies since last summer
and they...

all right all right there’s a land
where forgetting where forgetting weighs
gently upon worlds unnamed
there the head we shush it the head is mute
and one knows no but one knows nothing
the song of dead mouths dies
on the shore it has made...

The pull of guns I understand,
my father taught me hand on hand
how death is. Life asserts.
(Best take it like a man.)

I shot a dove, the common sort
and mourned not life but life so short...