Polar (Excerpt)
Snowlight and sunlight, the lake glacial.
Too bright to open my eyes
in the dazzle and doze
of a distant January afternoon.
It's long ago and the house naps in the plush silence
of a house asleep, like absence,
I'm dreaming on the white bear's shoulder,
paddling the slow hours, my fingers in his fur.
His eyes are glass, each hair a needle of light.
He's pegged by his claws to the floor like a shirt on the line.
He is a soul. He is what death is. He is transparency,
a loosening floe on the sea.
. . .
In the Reading Room (Excerpt)
You scan the stream, silver-eyed as a heron
searching the surface for what might betray
a halt in the flow, pentameter's delay,
a master's faded words, his lexicon.
Before you, found in an old book
marking a page, a longhand manuscript.
Look, where the knib unloaded ink and dipped
and rose again, leaving a blot on the downstroke,
. . .
The Titanic (Excerpt)
Under the ocean where water falls
over the decks and tilted walls
where the sea come knocking at the great ship's door,
the band still plays
to the drum of the waves,
to the drum of the waves.
Down in the indigo depths of the sea
the white shark waltzes gracefully
down the water stairways, across the ballroom floor
where the cold shoals flow
and ghost dancers go,
ghost dancers go.
. . .
