Because the shad are swimming in our waters now, breaching the skin of the river with their

January Contorted by wind, mere armatures for ice or snow, the trees resolve to endure for now,

When our cars touched When you lifted the hood of mine To see the intimate workings under… When we were bound together By a pulse of pure energy,

After Adam Zagajewski I am child to no one, mother to a… wife for the long haul. On fall days I am happy with my dying brethren, the leaves…

When they taught me that what matt… was not the strict iambic line goo… over the page but the variations in that line and the tension produ… on the ear by the surprise of diff…

When I taught you at eight to ride a bicycle, loping along beside you as you wobbled away

1. THE SACRIFICE On this tile the knife like a sickle-moon hangs in the painted air

Some say it was a pear Eve ate. Why else the shape of the womb,

Finding a new poet is like finding a new wildflower out in the woods. You don’t see its name in the flower books, and nobody you tell believes

I married you for all the wrong re… charmed by your dangerous family h… by the innocent muscles, bulging l… weapons under your shirt, by your… the colors of painted scraps of su…

What we want is never simple. We move among the things we thought we wanted: a face, a room, an open book

Into the gravity of my life, the serious ceremonies of polish and paper and pen, has come this manic animal

I remember what my father told me: There is an age when you are most… He was just past fifty then, Was it something about the trees t… There is an age when you are most…

The door of winter is frozen shut, and like the bodies of long extinct animals, cars lie abandoned wherever