Selected Poems
DRIVING THROUGH STORMS
Two mice skittle and escape my tires.
A white skunk waddles along the yellow line
and then I almost hit a cat. Electric lines writhe
in the road and the radio turns
to static. Peace. For a moment.
I am thankful. And then the sky, punk with rocks,
throws hailstones. A tree explodes.
It snows. Floods fill the streets with icebergs
and storms become magnificent beyond measure.
The sun. The sun. The green. The ice.
The hail. The snow. The sun. The mice.
—from LOOSESTRIFE FOR PORCUPINES
PROTEST
Water, heating, is a different beast, unnatural,
a roar--no burble. Unmusical, a galaxy
of molecules brought to boil, screaming
micro-lobsters, I imagine. We've discovered
microbes twit like finches when alarmed,
so why not the H’s and the O’s when forced
to be steam? Single-celled planktons broadcast
their distress in the oceans, raise chalk shields.
Some kill themselves to slow a viral invasion
of their kind. And so, making tea, I’m listening
to electrons scrabbling at this steel wall,
crying out throatlessly, clinging,
like little me's, like my life heating up,
doing all they can to stay the way they are.
—from LOOSESTRIFE FOR PORCUPINES
.
RADIANT
Chernobyl teems without us
multiplied and multiplying
as if a burden has been lifted from the earth–
birch feathers albino crows
swarms of dragonflies
and giant wolves returned from folk tales
to trot through streets turned back
to fecund green
different shades of wind
one cement sarcophagus
an aging testament to intellect
in coolant canals, catfish breed
twice the size of men
––a desperate Eden builds again.
- A Reading -
Finding Direction Through Local Poetry In 'Compass Roads'
New England Public Media | By Carrie Healy
D.M. Gordon reading her poem “On West Hill Road”
