The decorum of fire... —Pablo Neruda We learned the decorum of fire, the flame’s curious symmetry, the blue heat at the center of the…

Looking for a place where we might turn off the inner dialogue, the monologue of futures & regrets,

Spring, rainbows, ordinary miracles about which nothing new can be said. The stars on a clear night

I sit in the black leather chair meditating on the plume of smoke that rises in the air, riffling the pages of my life

‘Death is our eternal companion,’… —Carlos Castaneda My death looks exactly like me. She lives to my left,

What makes a poet? Many have tried to guess. Is it a voice like a conduit, a plainspokenness to grief,

On a darkening planet speeding toward our death, we pierce a rosy cloud & hit clean air,

You gave me the child that seamed my belly & stitched up my life. You gave me: one book of love poem… five years of peace

Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye– kissing the air,

In the glass-bottomed boat of our lives, we putter along gazing at the other world under the sea– that world of flickering

The poet fears failure & so she says “Hold on pen— what if the critics hate me?”

the sky sinks its blue teeth into the mountains. Rising on pure will (the lurch & lift-off, the sudden swing

I am in love with my womb & jealous of it. I cover it tenderly with a little pink hat (a sort of yarmulke)