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Poetry
Last Requests
I want to be excused, at least this once, / from being me, and be instead someone / who sees daily things as miracles
December 2019Canoe
When I was young, years ago, canoeing on the green / Green River, with my young first husband, / I wriggled out of my shorts, eased over the lip / of our little boat, and became eel-woman, / naked and glistening, borne along in the current.
December 2019Kenny
after my mother’s funeral standing in the receiving line just / below the altar rail shaking hands with people I hardly knew / when Kenny a face I hadn’t seen in twenty years appeared and / grabbed me and hugged me so damn hard the wind went out / of me
November 2019Selected Poems
— from “Things My Daughter Pretends” | that she has fairy wings that she / is seventeen that she can talk to dogs / in dog language
November 2019What Was Astonishing
What was astonishing / was that after a summer of running around the yard / and dragging our rubber dinghy a mile to the lake and rowing / and doing backflips off the dinghy and bicycling around the lake
October 2019The Extra Year: Selected Poems
— from “Almost Done” | My wife has taken Pepper to the vet this morning. She is losing her hair, doesn’t like her food, has growths on her skin, moves slowly after eighty-four dog years.
October 2019The Middle-Aged Joggers
We gather beside the pond in great ragged flocks, like birds. We run. Knees and backs stiff, we run — along the available routes, the ones before us, the paved and unpaved paths.
October 2019Ode To My Kind
Here I am, once again among my kind, / half-moon high outside the window / rowing its light down the empty street, parting / the dark waves of the parking lot, soaking the oak leaves / all the way through.
September 2019Climate Change
That the sun would burn out — / even a million years from now — / was the worst news of my childhood.
August 2019
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