To call you the Creative Champion of the Arts
Would be an achievement befitting you
As a librarian
An advocate
and as a friend

To think your impact as meaningful
Would be calling a rainbow only
slightly attractive
Walking by
seeing the gallery
I couldn't picture the space without it

To see and hear the poets you brought here
Is like tasting fine wine in Paris
As Charlie wondered
As we do
what life is all about
The depth and breadth of their work
refreshing the dull landscape we knew.

To know you as a friend
Is something I cherish
Like E. B White's Wilbur and Charlotte
Rare is it to find a friend and a fellow writer
You, BestSeller, were both.

Now hail the Dawn!
Celestial brightening,
Where we,
Nipple tenacious,
Easterly greet busy seabirds,
Swooping foam,
Singing:
"Find the fish!"
"Find the fish!"
Or expansion undiminished,
By time's warp,
Celebrating Yes!
And then Yes!
And then Yes!
Now hail the Dawn!

We knew it was big
when Mr. McKernan

went out into the hallway
in the middle of class,

something unheard of, and
through the cracked doorway we

glimpsed frantic activity.
Then the knocking

of the loudspeaker, as if someone were trying
to get in, and at the news Susan Kennedy,

seated in front of me, burst into tears, as the question
hit me: was she crying

for him, or because
she had the same name?

On the day of the mournful drumming we got bored
and played outside. It was no surprise

that Christopher had the idea, the one who broke
into the temple, who, rumor said, took girls into the woods

and got them 'bow-legged.' He found the coupon
in his father's magazine, filled it out with his address, but

used the assassin's oddly rhythmic name.
We pooled the money

and mailed it in. Three weeks
later, in brown paper

wrapped with string, against his front door,
we found it leaning.

She was arguing
whether it was better
to be a Democrat
or a Republican,

and nobody dared
point out to her
that she was
not even American.

Would
that you could meet me at the river
at the confluence of yearning and the void
And we
bubbled stone to stone wash
might flow.
Our hearts know, our bodies do not.
We are old now and do not have time for this:
I, wan
and flown wide open like a great white egret
at the edge of the sea
And you
Glacial Truth

Safely ashore, Boldini's catch is in:
anchor planted among the clatter of rocks,
the villagers crowd around, lost to the din
of fishwife and monger arguing the cost
of the day's live haul—conger teeming in vats
we do not see, but sense, perhaps imagine,
subject as we are to this Etretat
composed of canvas, pigment, oil and resin
awash with sea brine, mottled light that swells
with the gull's far cry and an ocean's smell.

A hospital is memory you can never forget
A stream racing in your mind
A quiet and a busy place a the same time
A place that never stops
A bird that can't chirp
A hospital isn't just a building

It is a LIFESAVER

Your piercing, sharp claws tear through field mice.
Bones crackling like a big bomb fire.
Twisting your head around like a string of pasta.
Swooping through the air.
Blending right in with the trees and the midnight sky.
Your eyes, bright yellow, like the moon.
King of the trees.

the pulsing embers glowing coal remembers like stone in the sun
striated flickering with leaf shadow.

the pines comb the wool from the wind spun threads of sky
azure ruby sunrise and the muted tones of the master
to form the flowers of winter feathers
and the melody flies spiraling bobbin and sailing shuttle
through the heddles and hedges and eyelets of tree twigs,
and the clacking harnesses of the boughs waving
the abstract rudiments of rhythm
as this morning's tapestry of bird voice unfurls.

the water resists the clutching cold
twisting away from its hardening grasp
to flow deeper into the village past
and we look into the still frame to see
the character of a stream as we first felt
its entraining our breath
and our center permeating the air and sunlight;
as we walk further into these verses
we lose what has come before like imaginary gardens
and unrealized orchards among the rambling walls
of the mountainside where parallel lives divided.

the farmer is out early
understanding the day
throwing feed to chickens in his sleep
staring out where the sun will rise
and the stream returns somewhere
far away, speaking a different language.