Poetry

We knew about the ocean:
  sharks and moods and pearls.
     Flood waters in Brigantine.

August, goldenrod blowing. We walk
into the graveyard, to find
my grandfather’s grave. Ten years ago

This time the leaving felt especially good
  as if I’d moved
toward some clean elemental selfishness

He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,

This morning I sit across from you
at the same small table,
the sun italicizing

A raindrop fell on my hand,
crafted from the Ganges and the Nile,

from the ascended frost of a seal’s whiskers,
from water in broken pots in the cities of Ys and Tyre.

No, I just can’t write today, I said
to myself, sprawling on the couch, my mind
an open invitation to sleep, when there it was:
The Invisible Hand. A title. Having arrived
unbidden, it felt like inspiration,

It is an old drama
this disappearance of the leaves,
this seeming death
of the landscape.