The way my daughter sleeps it's as if she's talking
to the dead. Now she is one. I watch her eyes roll
backwards in her head, her senses fold

one by one, and then her breathing quiets to a beat.
Every night she fights this silent way of being
with all the whining ammunition that she has.

She wins a tired story, a smothered song, the small
and willful links to life that carry her away.
Welcome to the Egyptian burial. She's gone to Hades

with her stuffed animals. When she wakes,
the sad circles disappeared, she blinks

A little village in Texas has lost its idiot

— Caption on a protest sign

Let us deal justly.

— Edgar, disguised as Poor Tom, from Shakespeare's King Lear ; act 3, scene 6

But where, oh where is the holy idiot,
truth teller and soothsayer, familiar

of spirits, rat eater, unhouseled wanderer
whose garble and babble fill rich and poor,

homeless and housed, with awe and fear?
Is he hiding in the pit of the walkie-talkie,

its grid of holes insatiably hungry,
almost like a baby, sucking in the police sergeant's

I did not walk down to the lake today.
Maybe I should have, though if you leave
a pail of rainwater sitting in the yard,
it gives an answer to most things. Emptied,
it's metal asking questions. Your face appears
undisturbed if you approach it carefully.
No one at the lake would have known me.
I don't think you can approach a lake carefully,
or I don't think we ever approach what we mean
to a lake.











From Poetry Magazine, Vol. 186, no. 3, June 2005. Used with permission.

You can't even buy a soda. You can only
see these things, see a mother steer
her son to the car, his head cocked
licking his ice cream.

Earlier, driving, trying to keep
between two cornfields, I couldn't see myself
into a map, couldn't be anywhere in it,
though I knew all the patient states
between us.

Pigeons sit high on a mill's peaked roof,
spaced even as beads. They can stand that
close to each other, but looking at them
you wouldn't know it. Would you.

Fair dweller by the dusty way —
Bright saint within a mossy shrine,
The tribute of a heart to-day
Weary and worn is thine.

The earliest blossoms of the year,
The sweet-briar and the violet
The pious hand of Spring has here
Upon thy altar set.

And not alone to thee is given
The homage of the pilgrim's knee —
But oft the sweetest birds of Heaven
Glide down and sing to thee.

Here daily from his beechen cell
The hermit squirrel steals to drink,
And flocks which cluster to their bell
Recline along thy brink.

Here slumbers Rome, among her broken tombs,
A funeral highway stretching down the past,
With few inscriptions, save the constant blooms
By kindly Nature on these altars cast.

The dust of glory all around me lies,
The ashes of dead nations and their kings:
I hear no voice save what from out the skies
The lark shakes down from his invisible wings.

Where slept a Caesar, now the owlet hides —
A silent spirit till the day has fled:
Here gleams the lizard, there the viper glides —
The steadfast guests of the patrician dead.

Dear transient spirit of the fields,
Thou com'st without distrust,
To fan the sunshine of our streets
Among the noise and dust.

Thou leadest in thy wavering flight
My footsteps unaware,
Until I seem to walk the vales
And breathe thy native air.

And thou hast fed upon the flowers,
And drained their honeyed springs,
Till every tender hue they wore
Is blooming on thy wings.

I bless the fresh and flowery light
Thou bringest to the town.
But tremble lest the hot turmoil
Have power to weigh thee down;

Ancient road, that wind'st deserted
Through the level of the vale,
Sweeping toward the crowded market
Like a stream without a snail;

Standing by thee, I look backward,
And, as in the light of dreams,
See the years descend and vanish,
Like thy tented wains and teams.

Here I stroll along the village
As in youth's departed morn;
But I miss the crowded coaches,
And the driver's bugle-horn—

Miss the crowd of jovial teamsters
Filling buckets at the wells,
With their wains from Conestoga,

O Brother of the righteous will,
O Brother full of grace,
What human glory is revealed,
Foreshadowed in thy face!

As once the homes of Galilee,
It lighteth ours to-day;
And still to men it showeth clear
The Life, the Truth, the Way.

Thou art the Way: to feel, to know
The Goodness throned above,
There is no other way than thine,—
To lead the life of love.

Thou art the Truth: alone on eyes
Like thine the visions fall,—
The secret of the pure in heart,
Beholding God in all.

Upon the sactious College Disputes between the L ICENTIATES and Doctors .

Why all this mighty public Rout?
 Give up the real Cause;
What! have the bold Licentiates broke
 Your dictatorial Laws?

Not herd with Brothers you've approv'd;
 Fie! let the Matter pass:
We want no further Proof to show,
 Ass brays—'gainst what?—an Ass!