Figured Dark: Poems

Contents

Contents I In the Great Field at Mount Holyoke, under a Dome of Stars 3 Caller, What is Your Question? 4 Rainy Afternoon at the Gotham Book Mart 6 Not that Happiness 8 Black Dog 10 Self-portrait, with Epiphany to Come 11 For the Lord G-d Bird, No Longer Extinct 12 At the Museum of Whiskey History 14 My Mother Thinks She’s Peggy Lee 15 Gentians 16 Near Gatlinburg 17 After the Divorce 19 After an Illustration by Rockwell Kent for Moby Dick, in Which a Whale Takes a Dory in its Maw, and Heads for the Bottom of the Sea 20 Lost-Love Ghazals 21 Feeder 23 Archie Babcock Explains the Accident to John Berryman’s Biographer 24 Exile Valise 28 II Sail On, Sailor 33 Making a Path to the Blackberries 36 Figured Dark 37 Memories of Pittsburgh and Stern 39 American Kestrel 40 Blue Angels 42 Mason’s Kitchenettes 44 The Fish Lamp on the Cover of Coastal Living Magazine 46 Glaucoma 47 In Ambient Light 51 Obbligato 53 Letter to M., from Swannanoa 54 Lilacs, for Instance 56 Biopsy 57 After the Diagnosis 58 Swimming at Night 59 Elegy for Light and Balance 60 III The Body, Burning 67 Hay Devil 69 Discontinuous Narrative 70 Letter to the Chairwoman of the Reunion Committee 72 Dancing with the Crack Whores, at the Homeless Shelter Run by My Wife 76 Were We Speaking, Had You Asked 78 Letter to Robert in Gearhart 79 Descent 80 Carolina Woodpecker 81 At 48, Walking My Baby Past the Voodoo Lounge 82 Blackbirds 84 The Salt Cairn 85 Lepidopterist 86 On a Visit to His Namesake City, St. Paul Walks Six Blocks of Goodrich Avenue 87 xii Figured Dark ...