Category: Poetry

  • Good Harbor, Home

    The following poem was set to music by the composer Rob Bradshaw and had a world premiere with the Salem Philharmonic, John Koza conducting, in February of 2018.   Waves break on outcrop rock: granite, fire-formed and hard, headland granite– no coddled cape, no sandbar, nothing soft in her city, no knickknack: Gloucester-by-God, attitude granite.…

  • The Lesson

    The Newtown kids weren’t thinking of Aurora or Tucson, They had not pledged themselves to weapons, and being kids Could not remember Blacksburg, Columbine, Binghamton. The earnest boys and girls of first grade Weren’t linking patriotism to firepower and stripper clips, Nor Christmas to domestic terror, cowardice, Congress – Hadn’t learned the rhetoric of re-election…

  • Taking the Train of Singularity South from Midtown

    As the funnel of everyone in Times Square            42nd Street cascades down the station stairs, pace and urgent purpose damming briefly at turnstiles before cleaving into streams for an 8th or 7th Avenue train, an A Train, the Two, and while quick, diverged currents, hot and breathless, pick platforms, stop…

  • At the Museum of Modern Art

    Photography’s third floor, the brochure Announcing pioneer artists and old Prints of the liquid labial school – Albumen silver, gelatin silver. Turning a corner, you’re stopped dead By Eugene Cuvelier: Will, in a bare Wind-tangled tree – who knew They were saying everything in 1860? And by Auguste Belloc, whose sitter, unnamed, Presents nevertheless with pride and attitude.…

  • The Parlor

    The oldest of the grand houses along Washington Dates from ‘84 and is one of our parlors, A mansion with wraparound porches and bay windows Built by a fishing magnate, a great man, Himself buried from home, in the former custom. Many evenings there are crowds of people and cars, So a stranger would think party, again…

  • On the Oubangui

    Guides poled and guests paddled, The bare-backed crew working currents As the rest of us stroked slowly, Wake and water snakes trailing Our canoe on the broad Oubangui, border Of Congo and a former French colony, La Republique de l’Afrique Centrale, Five desperate degrees above the equator. The shortwave radio crackled static: ‘Snow in the…

  • The School of Not Moving

    Hands flat on his greywacke lap, Pharaoh’s unfazed by city traffic, Gabby guards, the bell of children A gallery back as they meet the mummy.   Similar stillness marks the stern Gravegood gods, the case of cats, And hard headrests chipped from sycamore Fig that would surely slow time.   The children charge, scend of…

  • In The Basement

    On certain isolated, indifferent days a bright bar of light will strike clear across the basement. Like Newgrange or Stonehenge, except the basement’s not aligned with anything. The light finds something to do. It probes bundles of books, the white washing machine, lingers over Christmas bins, spots the wine and LP’s, a swing set, half-empty…