OCCUPANTThe sad mailbox of my extreme youth, what did it ever deliver? The only...
A CRITICPick up your socks. Clean the house once in a while. Go to the dentist. ...
HISTORIANPiles and piles of books, boxes of documents, photographs, bones, shreds of clothes...
YOU WHO KNOWI was just enough bigger that I could wrestle you into the clean straw of the mow...
GRIFFY LAKEI spread my smooth water like a lap and caught the trees' faces where they fell...
MY ANCESTORS
My ancestors abound within me:
one of them was stupid.
Fields pressed down with a mat of grasses,
houses squatting to spread lawns,
bright clover right up to the fence,
made him think he knew where his place was
like a beast coming up to its stall
satisfied. He had warm sides, an open mouth,
and a hollow place in the head
he filled up with devotion and trust,
simple trust, a trust so stupid
he thought the world
was always and everywhere a blessing.