Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003

Mother

The heat felt good I couldn’t move The shutmouth mother goes down the stairs and drinks warm whiskey she always goes and drinks warm whiskey down in the corner: Handme -down: And everything on the hair of starting again. The girl spills the half-gallon of milk on the floor. The milk is all over the floor, the table, the chairs, the books, the dinner, the windows —Mother and son are gone happy. The father to work. The sister to marriage. The girl is still spilling the milk-house white negative shining out of one life into another life. Mother in your white dress your smoke your opaque eye 4 door in the mountain you whose name my foot wrote I had to die break the rope push through the stone fence of you, of myself, and fly Eighteen Green bookbag full of poems I leaned with my bicycle at the black brick edge of the world What was I, to be lost or found? My soul in the corner stood watched * Girl and boy we had given each other we wanted breasts bellies hair toenails fingernails hair nipples foreskin foreskin heart * I gave up signing in to the night book little notes in time new poems 5 ...