The day spoils (exercising translation)
The day spoils we say meaning
the rain will soon come.
As if it, too, were not as essential as air. Continue reading The day spoils (exercising translation)
Tag: dogs
An alchemy of violets
We gathered rhubarb from our neighbours’ patch and close by, in a dell, I found a broad scattering of violets, the last of the season. I plucked them and dropped them into my hat; I wanted to try to make violet flower ink. Continue reading An alchemy of violets
Into the thrill
We walk in the rain at dusk along /a broken black road frogs chanting/in the ditches…
This poem is one of a series of shortened sonnets, in which I test what happens if I compress the sonnet into 13 rather than 14 lines. It feels as if, sometimes, hurry is what happens–the poem dashes off, like a dog into the night. Continue reading Into the thrill
Now fog shrouds us
Faintly the peepers shimmer. Ice has just melted in the hollows and now fog shrouds us as if hiding the tenderness of shoots and leaves and newly laid eggs from the outside world. Continue reading Now fog shrouds us
The quick and the dead
As winter recedes we find bones along the beach. The dog gnaws some of them, but not the coyote skull with its long canines and nasal passages packed with a delicate fretwork of turbinates. Continue reading The quick and the dead
Kindred blood of all that breathes
Pintails warble into the quiet air; then the sound of a rifle and its recoil. Hunting season again. I dress my doe-coloured dog in a rouge coat, pull on my gloves. Continue reading Kindred blood of all that breathes
Another kind of wildness
A sonnet that begins with words yanked, one from each line of “returning the books to their shelves” by Bernadette Mayer. city time 19 stream taxi it mulch then window nothing books cold phone shelves Feeling far from the city finally in Desolation. Time to walk and stretch and swim and think until 19 o’clock in the evening when I hope we will eat a … Continue reading Another kind of wildness
Behind it all/ Songs from rural zones #LIV
Morning arrives cloud-dark and humid. Low tide. Wind in the trees and a flow of birdsong. A great blue heron flies off when I step outdoors, cracking loudly. Cicadas. The buzzing of insects. A kingfisher ratchets by, sounding an alarm. Blue scent of air, as if soon it will rain. Finches in the trees. The air sweet, odour of cut grass and salt air, a … Continue reading Behind it all/ Songs from rural zones #LIV
You who would see the wind (prose poems)
Psst, are you there? I don’t think I’m alone here—that’s what the philosophers say anyway. Here’s what I see: flickering shadows on blank walls of the afternoon, the sound of leaves rustling in the wind. Continue reading You who would see the wind (prose poems)
When the wind speaks of snow/ In praise of animated observation and observations of animation
Every spring is riddled with odd auguries and peculiar sightings, this one no more than others perhaps, save the stepped up and persistent sense of doom that whistles through the nightly news as the world lurches from crisis to crisis. Continue reading When the wind speaks of snow/ In praise of animated observation and observations of animation
Visible Poetry 