For sale: writer's life; needs work.

It is now August The long evening of summer I am still inside.

I have two sons, but I can’t remember their names. There’s lots of things I can’t remember anymore, like who I am, and who I used to be, and where my arms and hands and fingers are. That’s one of the reasons I’m here at Seabury. It’s not a bad place, as far as hospitals go. I know I used to live with my sons in a big house Somewhere in America. And I know I was with them, that I was their Mother, for a very long time. I remember their births and I remember teaching them the alphabet and how ...

“VISTA” Having arrived at the edge of this precipice I can begin to see that the road Would have ended here however I came But I would have chosen This particular emptiness By an altogether different path Assuming, of course, That it would have been better To arrive here like the others Carried along by wind or river In the snow that falls from mountain tops Or the rain that, having fallen Rises up again From dew on fields of morning grass In the mist that floats like chimney smoke Above the ...

“DELAYED SORROW” Beneath the broken mirror of the sea Blue waves crash against the shores Tilting sunken ships Opening their doors For the woman in white Who rises from the water Searching for her daughter Every morning you can see her Combing the sea with impotent bones Rheumatoid and arthritic Unbounded by skin She’s just a skeleton And so very thin That she cannot remember Where her daughter has been Her skull rolls along the sand Searching for its teeth Or bobbles on the water’s edge A ch...

LULLABY I wanted to cloak and hide my limp As I walked through the portal Of your indubitable home Firm on two feet, I wanted to glimpse What it would be like to speak of The things I had already done Of the sentence I had borrowed And nailed into the coffin Each time the wind blew it open Of the letter I had started to write The red words flowing down my ankle Onto the thin paper of earth And the shaking after the letter From the sudden loss Of so many words Later on, with the man at the art...

“OBJECTS” The weight of objects Frightens me Light though They may be Feather thin They tug at me And take me in An envelope Fills me up Empty though It may be Black and blue It smacks at me And cuts my skin And takes me in Through the stained glass Under the arched doors Across wet grass On drying floors The dying pours Out of the skin Then the poison Sinks in They are heavy Objects all Filled with atoms And with awe They make me weak And make me fall All, all, all of them

“DISSOLUTION” I waited for you among the mountains In the half light of late October On the day they change the clocks And when the sun fell Behind the red rocks I pulled the gold watch Of our retired lives Over the bare bone Of my broken wrist Until it slid Like the weight of a pendulum Through my inattentive hands Useless and anachronistic I heard the tick, tick, tick of it Ring through the mountains Listening to its steady pulse I heard the ceaseless swoosh of it The heartbeat in the seash...