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…

Some say it was a pear Eve ate. Why else the shape of the womb,

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…

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…

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

Into the gravity of my life, the serious ceremonies of polish and paper and pen, has come this manic animal

The door of winter is frozen shut, and like the bodies of long extinct animals, cars lie abandoned wherever

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

Perhaps the purpose of leaves is t… the verticality of trees which we… as if for the first time: row afte… yearning upwards. And since we wil… ourselves for so long, let us now…

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

When our cars touched When you lifted the hood of mine To see the intimate workings under… When we were bound together By a pulse of pure energy,

I remember what my father told me: There is an age when you are most… He was just past fifty then, Was it something about the trees t… There is an age when you are most…

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…

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