Poem

We think of hidden in a white dressamong the folded linens and sachetsof well-kept cupboards, or just out of sightsending jellies and notes with no addressto all the wondering Amherst…

You Don't Know What Love Isbut you know how to raise it in melike a dead girl winched up from a river. How towash off the sludge, the stench of…

You have forty-nine days betweendeath and rebirth if you're a Buddhist.Even the smallest soul could swimthe English Channel in that timeor climb, like a ten-month-old child,every step of the Washington…

My husband gives me an Afor last night's supper, an incomplete for my ironing, a B plus in bed.My son says I am average, an average mother, but ifI put…

Said a lightning bug to a firefly,'Look at the lightning bugs fly by!''Silly dunce!' said the fly. 'What bug ever flew?Those are fireflies. And so are you.''Bug!' cried the bug.…

So when my proud city spreadher gypsy skirts, I reentered;she burned a greater, constant light.Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly- I tell you,every tenderness I have ever knownhas been nothingbut thwarted…

After Adam ZagajewskiI am child to no one, mother to a few,wife for the long haul.On fall days I am happywith my dying brethren, the leaves,but in spring my head…

Some sayit was a pearEve ate.Why else the shapeof the womb,or of the celloWhose single song is grieffor the parent tree?Why else the fruit itselftawny and sweetwhich your loverover breakfastlets…