Reunion

You seemed lovely then,
you with your shadow-breaking smile
and so much light beneath the skin,
beneath the sun that spun above us
and the wind.

There is no hiding it: This sun
is not the sun we knew,
or ever hope to know,
now that our coming near again
after our letting go, leads only
to shadows, dried-up landscapes,
last summer's cicadas stunned into silence.

(from Sentences, 1976)

Wanna Be a Poet?

Choose your words

Carefully if you must,
But never lose track of how

Many have been rejected.

Song of Civilization

Nothing sounds

As clear-cut as your voice shouting
Timber in the wilderness.

Kismet

Though fearing

The inevitable, for the love
Of one more moment

Of living, I will not perish
The thought.

Blind Faith

--for Jenny

Trails. And in the distance, dust, and the sun
floating through and down to the mountains
beyond us, boundaries of light and darkness,
what do we know of love? Only that it binds us.

(from Sentences, 1976)