Poetry

Late May, 1754: George Washington watches
as one of his confederates, the Iroquois warrior
Half-King, reaches down to the corpse
of a freshly slain French ensign,

I can imagine you on it. The museum placard
declares it able fit for dozens
with a keel spine longer than these other boats

Brioche. Barouche. And one of them you can still buy, by the dozen,
at the sweets stall in the weekend farmers market; the other
hasn’t been seen in a century (although they tend
to blend, to be conjoined twins, in my mind).

The Analects declare it is best
To withdraw from one’s generation.
Next, to withdraw to another land.

Give us an incisor, and we’ll rationally conjecture
an entire prehistoric head, to the glint
in its eyes and in the light along its scaled skin
—but first, we need that tooth, that seed

Under the streetlamp
cars glistened end
to end clogging the cul
de sac and driveway

I swim in his beard diving deep my breath giving out quickly in spite of all I know to do, all that he has taught me, my Merlin, he has schooled me in the things of the pot—the dragon’s blood and the mistletoe and the black willow—he has...

Why did it fascinate me so much,
that ditch my father had dug
in the front lawn to fix
a faulty pipe? I couldn’t keep

Wheat, mostly, to David Davies,
flax to the Owens, every month
a careful list of profit