I HEARD a woman’s lipsSpeaking to a companionSay these words: “A woman what hustlesNever keeps nothin’For all her hustlin’.Somebody always getsWhat she goes on the street for.If it ain’t a…

GATHER the stars if you wish it so.Gather the songs and keep them.Gather the faces of women.Gather for keeping years and years.    And then …Loosen your hands, let go and say…

There are no handles upon a languageWhereby men take hold of itAnd mark it with signs for its remembrance.It is a river, this language,Once in a thousand yearsBreaking a new…

THERE was a wild pigeon came often to Hinkley’s timber.  Gray wings that wrote their loops and triangles on the walnuts and the hazel.    There was a wild pigeon.  There was a summer…

MARY has a thingamajig clamped on her earsAnd sits all day taking plugs out and sticking plugs in.Flashes and flashes-voices and voices calling for ears to pour words inFaces at…

MONEY is nothing now, even if I had it,O mooney moon, yellow half moon,Up over the green pines and gray elms,Up in the new blue.    Streel, streel,White lacey mist sheets of…

THE ROSES slanted crimson sobsOn the night sky hair of the women,And the long light-fingered menSpoke to the dark-haired women,“Nothing lovelier, nothing lovelier.”How could he sit there among us allGuzzling…

DO you know how the dream looms? how if summer misses one of us the two of us miss summer-Summer when the lungs of the earth take a long breath…

IN the newspaper office-who are the spooks?Who wears the mythic coat invisible? Who pussyfoots from desk to desk              with a speaking forefinger?Who gumshoes amid the copy paper              with a whispering thumb? Speak…

THE SEA is large.The sea hold on a leg of land in the Chesapeake hugs an early sunset and a last morning star over the oyster beds and the late…