I married you for all the wrong re… charmed by your dangerous family h… by the innocent muscles, bulging l… weapons under your shirt, by your… the colors of painted scraps of su…

What we want is never simple. We move among the things we thought we wanted: a face, a room, an open book

1. THE SACRIFICE On this tile the knife like a sickle-moon hangs in the painted air

It was early May, I think a moment of lilac or dogwood when so many promises are made it hardly matters if a few are bro… My mother and father still hovered

I want to write you a love poem as headlong as our creek after thaw when we stand

After Adam Zagajewski I am child to no one, mother to a… wife for the long haul. On fall days I am happy with my dying brethren, the leaves…

Because the shad are swimming in our waters now, breaching the skin of the river with their

When they taught me that what matt… was not the strict iambic line goo… over the page but the variations in that line and the tension produ… on the ear by the surprise of diff…

The gathering family throws shadows around us, it is the late afternoon Of the family. There is still enough light

We invent our gods the way the Greeks did, in our own image’€”but magnified. Athena, the very mother of wisdom, squabbled with Poseidon

When I taught you at eight to ride a bicycle, loping along beside you as you wobbled away

I have banked the fires of my body into a small but steady blaze here in the kitchen where the dough has a life of its…

I am only leaving you for a handful of days but it feels as thought i will be gone forever the way the door closes

We think of hidden in a white dres… among the folded linens and sachet… of well-kept cupboards, or just ou… sending jellies and notes with no… to all the wondering Amherst neigh…