Poem

A soft October morning,
adagio sostenuto. Some part
of me is still delayed

in sleep. It is one with
night, with daylight
stars, moths that fumble

at a window pane, bewildered
that this tract of sky,
like no other, will not yield.

The coffee cup, double espresso,
is deeper than it looks.
Each sip I take

a dark reaffirmation. ...

after Horace, Odes I, v

What slim-hipped beachboy dripping
with musk is riding you
now on a bed of roses
in your snug den, Pyrra? Is it

for him you have braided
those honey-gold locks
in a knot so neat, so
homely? One day

soon, black moods, black
looks, he'll be cursing
you and the fickle
gods who have ...

Sweet nothings in our ear
   cherub   pumpkin   dearest chuck
but to the heart   which is the better
     listener   the password
to a tongue that only two in their comings
         and goings have access to

     A blessed mouthfu ...

I was woken at some hour
of darkness before dawn by a scent so heavy
on my senses, on the room, that I was convinced

a burglar had broken in
and was loitering
upstairs or in the hallway, or having caught

my step on the stairs above him was lying low
in the laundry, or sitting
upright and unbreathing

in one of the Windsor chairs, unaware it w ...

The storm blows you back
              its funnel ardent
              its wide hungry eye
Its tongue croons you
onto flatline of prairie

When poppies drowsed you
red breath drew
gravity into your limbs:
you yearned for tall ...

The dawn is only a thought.

The fulcrum on which we rest our newsprint, our toothless fingerprints, our balmy Paxil days.

Only a thought of the windy, dwindling kind.

Wake to urgent messages, to the waltz of hours crisp and fragile as thin pastry. To roulette of lightning yes. Of arid no.

&nb ...

            The ‘greate fyshe’, terrible
colossus, dark cathedral of days
            and nights, arrests
lost Jonah in his flight. Three

            days and nights spent
in wet earnest pray ...

Cut out a sixth of the heart.
At a day old—furless,
close-eyed, resembling nothing
so much as an infant's thumb—
he can survive it.
The mouse can regrow that missing part
in three short weeks.

Aesop knew it:
to be mouse-hearted
is as good as wearing
the swagger of lion.

His heart
perhaps the size of ...

In black chalk the beast
brusques forward   Silence   Rubens
has stopped his mouth
with a single line     He is already
awed by the den
he will find himself in even now
as his mane curls into wisp
of emptiness     A study on paper

But there in white chalk the grim
pose brightens
into ...

The grass grows longer on the easeway.

A pelican swipes the sky
            towards the seascape we can't yet see,
its webby legs outstretched:
                             & ...