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

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,

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

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…

Perhaps the purpose of leaves is t… the verticality of trees which we… as if for the first time: row afte… yearning upwards. And since we wil… ourselves for so long, let us now…

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…

I want to write you a love poem as headlong as our creek after thaw when we stand

I sing a song of the croissant and of the wily French who trick themselves daily back to the world

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

The gathering family throws shadows around us, it is the late afternoon Of the family. There is still enough light

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

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

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