Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

The little clock dings the night on the roof.
It hurries towerd the mystery of luck.
I don't know where these things are hidden
what is not behind is silence on the face
of a plaque dividing the barrel from the wall.
They intend to porpose a lower voice to sing a voice higher.
That at night one's life full of bits of wood
is silent is passing between the veins
much paints falls on the world indoors.
You are finished hearing throught a filter
where noise lends a sort of joy to your own clock
...

It was not dying: everybody died.
It was not dying: we had died before
In the routine crashes-- and our fields
Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks,
And the rates rose, all because of us.
We died on the wrong page of the almanac,
Scattered on mountains fifty miles away;
Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend,
We blazed up on the lines we never saw.
We died like aunts or pets or foreigners.

...

Did you know-
That sometimes i miss your call?
Sometimes i miss your all?

Did you know-
That its lonely when you are not here
And that loneliness is all i fear?

Did you know-
That precious is you i've ever had

...

Here I am in the garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face

how did this happen
well that's who I wanted to be

at last a woman
in the old style sitting
stout thighs apart under
a big skirt grandchild sliding
on off my lap a pleasant
summer perspiration

that's my old man across the yard
he's talking to the meter reader
he's telling him the world's sad story
how electricity is oil or uranium
and so forth I tell my grandson
run over to your grandpa ask him
to sit beside me for a minute I
am suddenly exhausted by my desire
to kiss his sweet explaining lips.
...

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.


...

On the day when the sun hid,
Darkness rose, dancing in ebony gloom
The bushes and trees, all shed
Thorny roses had begun to bloom.

The Sun, high and bright,
Was not seen since the day.
Dweller of solar light,
Prepared sacrifices to pray.


...

Daybreak: the household slept.
I rose, blessed by the sun.
A horny fiend, I crept
out with my father's gun.
Let him dream of a child
obedient, angel-mind-

old no-sayer, robbed of power
by sleep. I knew my prize
who swooped home at this hour
with day-light riddled eyes
to his place on a high beam
in our old stables, to dream

light's useless time away.
I stood, holding my breath,
in urine-scented hay,
master of life and death,
a wisp-haired judge whose law
would punish beak and claw.

My first shot struck. He swayed,
ruined, beating his only
wing, as I watched, afraid
by the fallen gun, a lonely
child who believed death clean
and final, not this obscene

bundle of stuff that dropped,
and dribbled through the loose straw

...

Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon

...

If an ant was crushed
Or a tall tree fell
Would the ant be buried
And would the dying leaves have stories to tell

Would it matter if the ant was a queen
Or if the tree beared fruit
Or only if the ant made a nest
Or how deep the path, a trees roots


...