Poetry

What are words when they meet the action 
of what they attempt to modify?

I wonder. Yes, I’m looking up as I say this,
I wonder if I do have a superpower. Maybe
I have more than one aspect of attraction,
this knack for drawing others in close, almost
touching me.

why she had six children,
your mother’s mother
who liked math and science,

Like heat he seeks them, 
            my son, thirsting 
to learn those

he don’t know 
            are his dead— 
some with his name

A March sky pinned with stars—
purple, almost, and a blue mist in the wheat stubble.
Under the laburnum, we waited—
the chains of leaf, its cascades of gold flower
gone, and the whole tree drooping

Let us remember liberty was not popular,
six years it took Laboulaye to convince
Bartholdi a gigantic statue was 
what New York harbor needed. Eleven
years later

 Take today. I want there

            to be less
of everything—wind

& worry, of leaves
            littering the ground
& love letters, addressee

Only a torso now, the head
long severed from the neck, pelvis
twisted off like a stubborn root.

I wish we were living
a story of desire, but
I don’t feel Odysseus 
beating out his tale
of longing at the oars

Forever you find

              your father
in other faces—

a balding head
              or beard enough
to send you following