Locked Gate

On December 19, 1980
Alaíde Foppa went to buy flowers.
She disappeared.

Sixty-six years old.
In a cellar, in a bloody cell, in Guatemala,
by the hands of thugs.
Or worse.

I walk by Alaíde’s sweet house in Tepoztlán
refuge from city noise and endless sorrow

Alaída’s house is closed.

Past the locked iron gate, leaves blow in corners

Now and then, someone, thinking of Alaída, tosses

Thirty years ago I write a poem, lift it to the wind,

Alaíde loved the light of Italian art


Teacher, translator, scholar,

No body. No grave. Not a strand of hair.

Only paper reminds us

but a century after she was born, her words,

Remembered, like Joe Hill, she’s alive as you or me.

Between us

Not one eighth of a millimeter

Not one eighth of an millimeter

Not a molecule struck by lightning

Only the length of that thread

Nothing between us

but this hour

Ghost Along the Tracks

Rough-cut stones ragged in roofless granite walls,
heaped on what was once the floor

Where windows were,
perfect rectangles of the mason’s craft look in

The room once low-roofed, dark, enclosed,
now illuminated by refractive rolling mist,
every standing stone silvered in waves

Trees, rosy blooming rowan-ash, reclaim their place
amidst the grasses, lupines, wild barley, verbena
nourished by grounded clouds

At St Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, Ireland

On the funerary cover, drapery

shining black and beautiful,

centuries of parishioners have yielded to its tactile seduction

and left a polished ghost of their passing caresses.

Flesh and bones consumed by decades ticking on,

century yielding to millennia,

and none of these lords and their few ladies

noticing at all.

My hand trails the looping folds of medieval Irish limestone,

polished deep perfect black,

a shade thinner, more black now than before I came.

And I, too, am a shade thinner,

a microscopic layer of fingertips left on this lady’s robe

clothing her eternity,

not mine yet.

At St Mullins

high above the river, the stone walls, the belfry,
condominium-ed nests crowd higher in flapping air
noisy thousands bank, wheel, shift to port then starboard, circle furiously

dusk meeting of the parliament of crows

That Day​

Knock your elbow against the edge of the door,
the funny bone sends a thrill of shock
right to your brain.

On this hot morning
our eyes knock.

In that instant

In the aftershock keep touching
that electric pain
lean against the doorframe
until our hearts can move again.

Night Work

In the night silence
the house hums darkly
wood creaks with memory of its tree life

refrigerator defrosts itself around ice cream
some small invisible creature scratches at the screen,
curls against the still warm wall

soft snores, shifting sheets
unseen stars
everyone sleeps in the dark

over the page
one bulb burns
word after word, one sheet after another.

Nebraska Sunrise

On the verge of a pond, grass glimmers with rime.

Thin ice cracks in tatters as the temperature rises a few degrees.

Early cold sunlight seeps across the eastern plain

And lends its energy to the half-frozen water.

New mists vaporize in a minute

Like crushed diamonds

Rising on the still silent air

Awakening the loons.

For Love of Red

Red silk wet on pine needles.

Maple and sumac glimmer red against the road

neither red as the red wool blanket

in my blue room.

Red Twig

Morning fog lifted its wet weight
And left the red twig
Shining in remembrance.

The clouds, in a prism of
urgency,
Oblivious
Rush to the sea.

An insect passes almost
silently
Lost in the litter of last summer.

Breath of Mercy

Hard edged cold slides in

ribs rigid, pleural sacs hold iced shards of air

lungs freeze from inside out

white fingernails roll over

round reddened fingers

on fire with cold

burning cold runs through each phalanx of fingers and toes

lodges in stiff knuckles immovable

in frozen jackets of useless ligaments

rime of sleep wraps tight

eyelids droop

sparkles of crimson, cobalt, citrine

warm the last slivers of fading, euphoric mind

At Santa Maria Del Mar, Barcelona

Body of light

climbs the arch of heaven

Brittany Spring

Up past the atmosphere
Steaming breath and steaming coast
Meet the streaming foggy sky.

Rough edged clouds
Remember the cold sea
Where they were born.

The sky is suddenly blue
Above the pitching,
stretching ocean of cloud,
Glowing clean in the high afternoon light,

So brilliant
That you have to squint
Or turn away for just a moment.

Ahead, banks, piles,
mountains of air
Holding all the ocean’s blue
And the tangerine-gold edges of evening.

Maybe it will rain again tomorrow.

Green Bamboo

Imperceptible wind

moves long green bamboo leaves

across old black bark

an inky brush in the Spanish air.

This almost tropical grass

bending to the ground

is cousin to upright bright Korean stalks.