a new poet
Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods. You don't see
its name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way
its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In fact
the very page smells of spilled
red wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day--the odor of truth
and of lying.
And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if only
in your dream there has been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush,
if only there had been a flower.
trajectory
In the trajectory
whose arc describes my life
I sense almost precisely
where I am. I see
the patchworked years
spread far below
as if this were an ordinary flight
over farms and fields
unfolding into dusk.
And it is ordinary,
ending as it must
in a single measure of earth
as other flights end,
even those of the bird
with an Indian name
whose landings are marked
by a feather pointing
towards the dark.
unveiling
In the cemetery
a mile away
from where we used to live
my aunts and mother,
my father and uncles lie
in two long rows,
almost the way
they used to sit around
the long planked table
at family dinners.
And walking beside
the graves today, down
one straight path
and up the next,
I don't feel sad, exactly,
just left out a bit,
as if they kept
from me the kind
of grown-up secret
they used to share
back then, something
I'm not quite ready yet
to learn.