Lepus Superaggerus

The old novelist who

lived down the street,

he played golf and

smoked and read books

by Chesterton and Barth,

and, like straw, he spun

words into words, and

then one day he died.

And now in the little

bookshop down the hill

there is a shelf that

lifts and carries only

words that he wrote

while drinking whiskey
in these woods by the beach.

One Hallowed Eye Which

One hallowed eye which
Whirling
Sees the world
Kaleidoscopic

One whirling eye
Prophetic
Seeing all that is
Momentous on the earth
And behind the earth
In wheels of fire and
In lucent eddies
A sunlit cataract

And a ragged-breathing
Mouth that
Catches
Rudely at the air
Desperate to be filled
With something not its own

This is the glory of mankind
This the LORD's own blessing

Darling Girl

I wish that I could say I

loved some little strangeness in

your face, a quirk of a mole,

some ghostly scar across your

cheek, a way you have of

smiling. But I am not the charming

hero of a charming film, and

I was not drawn to a small

thing about you—though of course

you were lovely in your darkness

and warmth, and the curl of

your hair and your enamel-bright

eyes and the weight of you

when you happened to find some

reason to be pressed against me—

I was bound to you entire. Your

wit and your happy cruelty, your

earnest irony in the service of

greater things. 

All I wanted was

you, whole and fiery,

but not all wants are better fed.