The Treekeeper’s Tale I have set up house in the hollow trunk of a giant redwood. My bed is a mat of pine needles. Cones drop their spirals on my face as I sleep. I have the usual flying dreams. But all I know when I wake is that this bark is my vessel as […]

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The final cliché When th’endangered species are no more and the seas are no longer around, and the multicultural masses are expiring under the ground; When every darned thing has been side-lined; and the last line in the sand has been drawn, and nothing is fit for purpose, and nobody else can be born; When […]

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Hungry for you I wish you were an ice-cream on a stick So I could thaw your coldness, lick by lick, With maybe a chocolate coating I could bite And break away to reach your sweet delight, Undressing you, removing nip by nip, Your shiny shell—it melts upon my lips. I wish you were an […]

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The Line like a tune in your head that cannot be heard that fades away when you listen like spider silk glimpsed as it drifts unanchored and aimlessly glistening like a bright curl of metallic thread after the fabric has shredded and it is freed from the pattern like the arc of light when a […]

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Humdinger (Getting louder) See I saw the feller humming, he was coming, he was coming, through the wood, like a bandit in a hood and it wasn’t looking good, no way, so I started in to pray but my wits had gone astray (wouldn’t yours?), big paws full of claws and enormous jaws, full of […]

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The Difference The difference between men and women is like that between animals and plants. —G.W.F. Hegel Free men are Kings of men and women are their Queens, It’s like poetry and daffodils, like sausages and beans, But, when two ride out together, then there’s one must ride behind, So, though Justice is a woman, […]

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What It Isn’t Old evidences of decay Still linger in the mind And little that you do or say Seems apposite or kind. You preach more often than you pray, You lose more than you find. It isn’t what you take away. It’s what you leave behind. You win so rarely when you play; The […]

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THE DOUBLE The witness Jones attests by affidavit That you were present at the seminar All of the day in question. He asked you for your number and you gave it. He’s quoted from your repartee At lunch and, when you broke at three, He came to collect a pamphlet from your car— And this […]

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The Blessings of Saint Vincent Saint Vincent, patron saint of student clothing, bequeathed to me from the depths and twists of his sorting tables, a perfect Victorian camisole, every stitch scaled in sixteenths of an inch, pin-tucked lawn and pale silk ribbon that threaded the three deep inches of lace to play, across the breasts […]

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Short Boots Twenty five dollar boots from Cooks— on Oxford Street, cow hide, Cowgirl-style, embossed, with a Cuban heel, you meant business and when, at eighteen, I walked home in the hot compression of summer after work, the local mongrels once formed a pack, the first, hair-sprung snarling, rushed to introduce his throat to the […]

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