Collecte Works (31 page)

I visit
the graves

Greatgrandfather

under wild flowers sons

sons here now I

            eye

of us all

but sonless

see no

             hop

clover boy to stop

before me

For best work

you ought to put forth

               some effort

               to stand

in north woods

among birch

The obliteration

of the world

his dinner speech

tonight I beseech

you

eat

the recommended melon

before the fruit flies

                        rise

from it

Spring

    stood there

         all body

Head

    blown off

         (war)

showed up

    downstream

October

    is the head

          of spring

Birch, sumac

    before

             the blast

The park
“a darling walk
for the mind”

A sense

of starlings musing

on robins

Green statue—

               Burns!

near abandoned

steepled

railroad station

lakeshore silence

glass box mushroom

with stairway stem

art museum

and townward

            the taverns

Who was Mary Shelley?

What was her name

before she married?

She eloped with this Shelley

she rode a donkey

till the donkey had to be carried.

Mary was Frankenstein's creator

his yellow eye

before her husband was to drown

Created the monster nights

after Byron, Shelley

talked the candle down.

Who was Mary Shelley?

She read Greek, Italian

She bore a child

Who died

and yet another child

who died.

Wild strawberries

Ruskin's consolation

His grey diaries

instanced with Rose

Liver here tonight

Tomorrow we dine out

tho not like him

at Club Metaphysical

Autumn

Ice

on the minnow bucket

and a school of leaves

moving downstream

Last night the trash barrel

smoked from lighted paper

This morning

from sun burning

the frost

The boy tossed the news

and missed

They found it

on the bush

Popcorn-can cover

screwed to the wall

over a hole

       so the cold

can't mouse in