Tr. from the Galician by Neil Anderson   They don’t build their nest under the roof tiles anymore. They fly circles around the shed, they come and go with mud…

  the washing-machine repairman asks if I’ve saddled my sons with biblical names on purpose the plumber presses me to admire his sculptures the electrician wonders if I have skills…

  We have been Taught that we Must not Speak. We must Not see each other. We Would want to Speak then. And If we want Love from the Father…

The air in a 30-by-30-by-30-foot room weighs a ton. --Lancelot Hogben, Science for the Citizen   Though they’d watched it fill their sails and felt it lash their cheeks, had…

  The path was there before anyone human trod it A random formation in nature On the lofty cross the white-gowned angel lifted her heels At your finger’s touch the…

  Why was my father wearing a blue formal jacket when it was so hot? It was summer in Oklahoma and over a hundred degrees. He wanted to know where…

from "The Onset" by Robert Frost   The fated snow gathered dark song. Again, winter, overtaken by the end lets nothing heap long. Against a slender April rill flashes a…

  An unremarkable corner café—he sits across from you at a table where he has waited patient as a ruin all your life. Nothing is more   than symbol, even…

  Above the pecan grove, two curtains of rain, one turning purple, the other another of God’s interrogations, What makes you believe you are? Seen by the left eye, a…

  Sleek starlings flying low ++++over whitecaps on the bay ++++++++++remind me of Ortygia,   so far from where I am, ++++exactly where I wish ++++++++++to stroll the white stones…

  It’s night in a subdivision whose name fills your ears with forest, and you’re sitting in a gazebo whose ivied trellises you’ve never seen in this shade of streetlight,…

  Yes—cradle, then rain, sun, sand-box and rusted chain- link, baseball in the diamond by the playground, first base, first kiss, home plate, then heart- break, first house, black granite…