Notes in the Margin

I doubt Abraham was happy about the whole Isaac thing but that doesn't redeem him, at least in my book. Some gods aren't worth the price of admission.

I have seventeen bottles full of rocks from mostly New England. I have notes in the margin of almost every book of poems I ever owned.

Eagles cross the sky too far away to say are they eagles or something plainer. I survived half a dozen encounters with marbles as a child, and can say nothing else about that at the moment.

Yet ask: who will save you when the monster at last rises from the pond - the fields and forests - and comes to eat you alive? Jesus practicing unfamiliar dance steps on the bridge over Watts Brook and - let's face it - he's not bad, not bad at all.

Swing sounds. Lawnmowers.

Secret bowers in which we pledge to one another our love forever. We are not forgiven who refuse to forgive our own selves.

Venus at an hour and in a state which broaches ecstatic. Faint cries of a rooster somewhere west.

This is also the earth! We are trapped in both the 1970s and the nineteenth century and the decor is primarily nautical, agricultural with a hint of hippie.

The shelves arc and bow and the many books on them begin to slip away. Behind us, memory stirs a thin wake that never disappears and yet professes nothing but its intention to disappear.

Favorable outcomes are the problem, maybe. Days pass, then years, and then you find yourself in hottest summer wondering when they'll let you out, say sure, try again.