When I Sleep When I sleep the birds come to the garden With their gifts of seeds out of ice Last year’s leaves of grass lift into night. All my […]

A poet friend of mine is getting married today. And in a brief text exchange she invited me to remember how I felt the day I took my vows with […]

The Beauty This too, the beauty of the antelope in snow. Is it enough to say we will imagine this and nothing more? Who understands that, failing, falters at the […]

  Solstice A sly gift it is, that on the year’s shortest day, the sun stays longest in this house – extends the wand of its slow slant and distant […]

Epigraph from Motto In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing About the dark times. Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956, edited by John Willett and […]

EARLY ONE SUMMER Years from now someone will come upon a layer of birds and not know what he is listening for these are the days when the beetles hurry […]

God Walks Burning Through Me When I sleep the birds come to the garden With their gifts of seeds. Out of ice last year’s leaves of grass lift into night. […]

The White Box In the white box you keep hidden away a white salamander waits with a flame in his small hands. How bright the fire! How long his breath […]

When I think back on commencement addresses I have sat through I think of shiny, successful speakers urging the grads on to scale great heights and capture their dreams. After […]

Yesterday, fleece under my sports jacket, I sat in Montreal with a few thousand others in a gargantuan white tent and listened to the convocation address at McGill University’s Spring […]