Poetry

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

Once, my father took me to the Rockaways
  during a hurricane
to see how the ocean was behaving,

I find, after all these years, I am a believer—
I believe what the thunder and lightning have to say;
I believe that dreams are real,
        and that death has two reprisals;
I believe that dead leaves and black water fill my heart.

Watching a couple of crows
playing around in the woods, swooping
in low after each other, I wonder
if they ever slam into the trees.

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

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