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The Good Thief
The heralded debut collection of poems by the author of What the Living Do (Norton, 1997). Selected by Margaret Atwood as a winner in the 1987 Open Competition of the National Poetry Series, this unique collection was the first sounding of a deeply authentic voice. Howe's early writings concern relationship, attachment, and loss, in a highly original search for personal transcendence. Many of the thirty-four poems in The Good Thief appeared in such prestigious journals and periodicals as The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Agni Review, and The Partisan Review.
- GenresPoetryLiterature
54 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1988
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909 people want to read
About the author
Marie Howe
25 books328 followersBorn in Rochester, New York, Marie Howe attended Sacred Heart Convent School and the University of Windsor. She received an MFA from Columbia University, where she studied with Stanley Kunitz, whom she refers to as “my true teacher.”
Howe has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia, and NYU. She co-edited (with Michael Klein) the essay anthology In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994). She has received fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
Howe has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia, and NYU. She co-edited (with Michael Klein) the essay anthology In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994). She has received fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
March 28, 2018
Glad I didn't read this first among Howe's poems, as it doesn't hold a candle to her later effort, What the Living Do. On the other hand, first books of established poets are edifying for other reasons, mostly because their formative efforts can be just as instructive to writers like me as their more developed works.
December 27, 2010
It seems very fitting that Margaret Atwood selected this book for an award. Both authors reveal the ominous afterwards of trauma. There's a strange suspense that can come after an abuse or upheaval (I have in mind "The Handmaid's Tale") rather than before it--like an adult looking back on something that happened during childhood, like the real understanding that comes after an event. But, as the title (and cover) suggests, this book isn't completely dire; it's also about transcendence and the spiritual. As the Hölderlin epigraph suggests, “The danger itself fosters the rescuing power.” And though these poems might feel like a thief, there is good (or, at least, surprises) in them that will shock.
On a craft level, I love how much Marie Howe gives in her settings, titles, and descriptions; there is a generosity in her narrative that allows the lyric more freedom. So often I see poems (and write poems) that withhold this narrative, making the poem a puzzle to understand. Howe shows her hand, and watches, with us, as the cards resonate.
On a craft level, I love how much Marie Howe gives in her settings, titles, and descriptions; there is a generosity in her narrative that allows the lyric more freedom. So often I see poems (and write poems) that withhold this narrative, making the poem a puzzle to understand. Howe shows her hand, and watches, with us, as the cards resonate.
September 8, 2016
Some number of years ago -- eight or ten or twelve -- I stumbled across a poem by Marie Howe. I can no longer tell you exactly where I was when I read it, but I still remember the way I felt when I read it: the electric current that hummed along my spine, the hair on my arms prickling up, everything reduced or expanded to me and the air I was pulling in and this poem.
I read "How Many Times" at least ten times that night.
An English professor of mine used to talk about something Aristotle said, about how the parts for something had to add up, and that if you could take any part away from a piece, it was not essential to the whole. (I am sure both my professor and Aristotle worded this idea more concisely/precisely/elegantly than I just did, but here we are.)
"How Many Times" always makes me think of that. It is a spare piece. There is not a word in there that doesn't need to be in there. Not a period, not a comma. Every piece of it needs to be there. Every part is essential. She quietly describes one small scene, and it shows you a world.
I have now, finally, read two of Howe's books. This one captures more of that electric current for me. Howe does a marvelous job of saying a lot with a little. Her language here is quiet but sets fires.
"How Many Times" is still her best work for me. I had not read it in at least five years, and when I came across it this time, that same burst of current hit. I had to reread it several times.
I read "How Many Times" at least ten times that night.
An English professor of mine used to talk about something Aristotle said, about how the parts for something had to add up, and that if you could take any part away from a piece, it was not essential to the whole. (I am sure both my professor and Aristotle worded this idea more concisely/precisely/elegantly than I just did, but here we are.)
"How Many Times" always makes me think of that. It is a spare piece. There is not a word in there that doesn't need to be in there. Not a period, not a comma. Every piece of it needs to be there. Every part is essential. She quietly describes one small scene, and it shows you a world.
I have now, finally, read two of Howe's books. This one captures more of that electric current for me. Howe does a marvelous job of saying a lot with a little. Her language here is quiet but sets fires.
"How Many Times" is still her best work for me. I had not read it in at least five years, and when I came across it this time, that same burst of current hit. I had to reread it several times.
September 16, 2017
Such a memorable collection demanding reread after reread. Honestly, it's multilayered, complex (and simple at the same time), highly emotional, and beautifully crafted. Howe is so vulnerable at times, and all her ugly truths demand blood and fire and holy retribution. And, possibly tequila. Lots of it. It was beautiful and heartbreaking, exactly what poetry is meant to make you feel. "What Belongs to Us" (my favorite poem from this collection) had me nearly in tears, and it stayed with me for weeks after.
February 1, 2021
I think most writers and poets (rarely one and the same) are searching for something through their novels and poems, respectively. Solace. Understanding. Revenge. Honesty. Closure. Redemption. Peace. They stalk what they seek with each new work, and when they finally hit on it, there is transcendence.
In my humble opinion, The Good Thief is not Marie Howe's transcendent work. I believe that to be What the Living Do: Poems. You can fight me.
Yet you can feel the stalking here. Many of the themes fully bared in Living are partially exposed in Thief. The abuse in her childhood. Faith and Biblical figures superimposed onto today's world. Exploring unbelonging in the skin of others, like a beast learning the routine of its prey and recognizing its own practicalities, its own comforts in the quarry's actions.
There is beauty in beginnings, and I surely enjoyed Howe's early hunt. Overall, I gravitated to "What Belongs to Us," "A Thin Smattering of Applesauce," "Part of Eve's Discussion," and "Recovery," which is excerpted below.
You have decided to live. This is your fifth
day living. Hard to sleep. Hard to eat,
the food thick on your tongue, as I watch you,
my own mouth moving.
In my humble opinion, The Good Thief is not Marie Howe's transcendent work. I believe that to be What the Living Do: Poems. You can fight me.
Yet you can feel the stalking here. Many of the themes fully bared in Living are partially exposed in Thief. The abuse in her childhood. Faith and Biblical figures superimposed onto today's world. Exploring unbelonging in the skin of others, like a beast learning the routine of its prey and recognizing its own practicalities, its own comforts in the quarry's actions.
There is beauty in beginnings, and I surely enjoyed Howe's early hunt. Overall, I gravitated to "What Belongs to Us," "A Thin Smattering of Applesauce," "Part of Eve's Discussion," and "Recovery," which is excerpted below.
You have decided to live. This is your fifth
day living. Hard to sleep. Hard to eat,
the food thick on your tongue, as I watch you,
my own mouth moving.
April 12, 2020
I read this first after Christmas when. My neighbor gave it to me, and at that point and when I picked it up again in early March, each poem hung bright and suffused with feeling, meaning, vitriol. Then as the rolling quarantines and stay at home orders started, it was as though there wasn’t enough room for me and the way the poems opened me up to feel. Too jagged, too side-eyed without the whole world for them to expand into. Beautiful beautiful beautiful but not the moment I can take them now. I have read other poetry by Howe and will read more when I have more emotional space to feel into them.
October 4, 2009
This book is one of the best written contemporary poetry books that I have read in a long time. Not only are the poems accessible, layered, and lyrical, they are ordered in a progressive and interrelated manner that gives them meaning beyond the individual poems. They actually work together at a larger level -- that of book. It's a sophisticated and enjoyable book. One you will want to read and reread.
July 21, 2015
I first learned of Marie Howe's poetry in my poetry workshop class in college. I immediately fell in love with her collection "What the Living Do" and purchased/read "The Good Thief". I enjoy her narratives, her subjects of family and spirituality as well as her long, prose-like lines. I especially enjoyed the poems, Part of Eve's Discussion, What Angels left, From Nowhere, Guests, and Mary's argument. LOVE THIS POET!!!!
Read
July 16, 2025she gets me
"The shadows have come back, circling the room like headlights.
It is for this I leave you, sudden October, the leaves burning.
bike crash and slamming kitchen door, the boys scrambling
into the back woods.
My mother, standing at the stove, has raised her spoon, about
to ask a question, like my father, his last week living, who
wandered from room to room almost satisfied, but for something
one more thing he couldn’t remember.
But all this was years ago. Last night, in a dream, my father
refused to play King Lear. He had married someone else.
She stood in the wings, wrapped in an old tweed coat, looking
at her watch. Already the facts dissemble.
Even now, as you desire me, my mother is stirring the question
into the burning soup as my father’s mouth closes,
the one hundred and nine years between them walking away
like a man who has knocked on the wrong door.
The boys, crossing the street behind him, making small rude noises,
are growing out of their sneakers. My brother already wears
his nervous look. The leaves are burning. Next year, even this
will be outlawed.
Understand, I love you, even as I turn from you like this,
stumbling breathless down a dim and disappearing street behind
a man who squints at house numbers, bewildered, about to say
something I can almost hear."
"No way back then, you remember, we decided,
but forward, deep into a wood
so darkly green, so deafening with birdsong
I stopped my ears.
And that high chime at night,
was it really the stars, or some music
running inside our heads like a dream?
I think we must have been very tired.
I think it must have been a bad broken off
piece at the start that left us so hungry
we turned back to a path that was gone,
and lost each other, looking.
I called your name over and over again,
and still you did not come.
At night, I was afraid of the black dogs
and often I dreamed you next to me,
but even then, you were always turning
down the thick corridor of trees.
In daylight, every tree became you.
And pretending, I kissed my way through
the forest, until I stopped pretending
and stumbled, finally, here.
Here too, there are step-parents, and bread
rising, and so many other people
you may not find me at first. They speak
your name, when I speak it.
But I remember you before you became
a story. Sometimes, I feel a thorn in my foot
when there is no thorn. They tell me,
not unkindly, that I should imagine nothing here.
But I believe you are still alive.
I want to tell you about the size of the witch
and how beautiful she is. I want to tell you
the kitchen knives only look friendly,
they have a life of their own,
and that you shouldn’t be sorry,
not for the bread we ate and thought
we wasted, not for turning back alone,
and that I remember how our shadows walked
always before us, and how that was a clue,
and how there are other clues
that seem like a dream but are not,
and that every day, I am less
and less afraid."
"The shadows have come back, circling the room like headlights.
It is for this I leave you, sudden October, the leaves burning.
bike crash and slamming kitchen door, the boys scrambling
into the back woods.
My mother, standing at the stove, has raised her spoon, about
to ask a question, like my father, his last week living, who
wandered from room to room almost satisfied, but for something
one more thing he couldn’t remember.
But all this was years ago. Last night, in a dream, my father
refused to play King Lear. He had married someone else.
She stood in the wings, wrapped in an old tweed coat, looking
at her watch. Already the facts dissemble.
Even now, as you desire me, my mother is stirring the question
into the burning soup as my father’s mouth closes,
the one hundred and nine years between them walking away
like a man who has knocked on the wrong door.
The boys, crossing the street behind him, making small rude noises,
are growing out of their sneakers. My brother already wears
his nervous look. The leaves are burning. Next year, even this
will be outlawed.
Understand, I love you, even as I turn from you like this,
stumbling breathless down a dim and disappearing street behind
a man who squints at house numbers, bewildered, about to say
something I can almost hear."
"No way back then, you remember, we decided,
but forward, deep into a wood
so darkly green, so deafening with birdsong
I stopped my ears.
And that high chime at night,
was it really the stars, or some music
running inside our heads like a dream?
I think we must have been very tired.
I think it must have been a bad broken off
piece at the start that left us so hungry
we turned back to a path that was gone,
and lost each other, looking.
I called your name over and over again,
and still you did not come.
At night, I was afraid of the black dogs
and often I dreamed you next to me,
but even then, you were always turning
down the thick corridor of trees.
In daylight, every tree became you.
And pretending, I kissed my way through
the forest, until I stopped pretending
and stumbled, finally, here.
Here too, there are step-parents, and bread
rising, and so many other people
you may not find me at first. They speak
your name, when I speak it.
But I remember you before you became
a story. Sometimes, I feel a thorn in my foot
when there is no thorn. They tell me,
not unkindly, that I should imagine nothing here.
But I believe you are still alive.
I want to tell you about the size of the witch
and how beautiful she is. I want to tell you
the kitchen knives only look friendly,
they have a life of their own,
and that you shouldn’t be sorry,
not for the bread we ate and thought
we wasted, not for turning back alone,
and that I remember how our shadows walked
always before us, and how that was a clue,
and how there are other clues
that seem like a dream but are not,
and that every day, I am less
and less afraid."
July 22, 2017
These poems are so perfect and beautiful. I want to read everything Marie Howe has ever written. This collection is wonderful.
April 30, 2025
Death, the last visit & Mary’s Argument <3
January 22, 2016
Not my favorite of Marie's as a whole, but it has some of her most surreal and haunting moments done in an overt way that she seems to have shrunk from in later work—it's nice to see it so bold here. It has the bite of early Simic, and yet still manages the restraint and circuity of theme that makes her a poet we are lucky to have living among us.
Gretel, from a Sudden Clearing
No way back then, you remember, we decided,
but forward, deep into a wood
so darkly green, so deafening with birdsong
I stopped my ears.
And that high chime at night,
was it really the stars, or some music
running inside our heads like a dream?
I think we must have been very tired.
I think it must have been a bad broken off
piece at the start that left us so hungry
we turned back to a path that was gone,
and lost each other, looking.
I called your name over and over again,
and still you did not come.
At night, I was afraid of the black dogs
and often I dreamed you next to me,
but even then, you were always turning
down the thick corridor of trees.
In daylight, every tree became you.
And pretending, I kissed my way through
the forest, until I stopped pretending
and stumbled, finally, here.
Here too, there are step-parents, and bread
rising, and so many other people
you may not find me at first. They speak
your name, when I speak it.
But I remember you before you became
a story. Sometimes, I feel a thorn in my foot
when there is no thorn. They tell me,
not unkindly, that I should imagine nothing here.
But I believe you are still alive.
I want to tell you about the size of the witch
and how beautiful she is. I want to tell you
the kitchen knives only look friendly,
they have a life of their own,
and that you shouldn’t be sorry,
not for the bread we ate and thought
we wasted, not for turning back alone,
and that I remember how our shadows walked
always before us, and how that was a clue,
and how there are other clues
that seem like a dream but are not,
and that every day, I am less
and less afraid.
Gretel, from a Sudden Clearing
No way back then, you remember, we decided,
but forward, deep into a wood
so darkly green, so deafening with birdsong
I stopped my ears.
And that high chime at night,
was it really the stars, or some music
running inside our heads like a dream?
I think we must have been very tired.
I think it must have been a bad broken off
piece at the start that left us so hungry
we turned back to a path that was gone,
and lost each other, looking.
I called your name over and over again,
and still you did not come.
At night, I was afraid of the black dogs
and often I dreamed you next to me,
but even then, you were always turning
down the thick corridor of trees.
In daylight, every tree became you.
And pretending, I kissed my way through
the forest, until I stopped pretending
and stumbled, finally, here.
Here too, there are step-parents, and bread
rising, and so many other people
you may not find me at first. They speak
your name, when I speak it.
But I remember you before you became
a story. Sometimes, I feel a thorn in my foot
when there is no thorn. They tell me,
not unkindly, that I should imagine nothing here.
But I believe you are still alive.
I want to tell you about the size of the witch
and how beautiful she is. I want to tell you
the kitchen knives only look friendly,
they have a life of their own,
and that you shouldn’t be sorry,
not for the bread we ate and thought
we wasted, not for turning back alone,
and that I remember how our shadows walked
always before us, and how that was a clue,
and how there are other clues
that seem like a dream but are not,
and that every day, I am less
and less afraid.
March 11, 2008
In this bold first collection of poems, Marie Howe grapples with the heavy issue of how human beings balance the weight of mortality with living, especially when living includes the difficult experiences of alcoholism, child abuse and gender inequality. Basically, Ms. Howe is taking God on ("The Good Thief" himself) and illuminating spirituality by using the very human details of everyday experience. In this poet's able hands, "the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you/your car could spin" (3) is used to explain what Eve must have felt like before eating the apple, and death is "someone [who] has knotted the lace of your shoe so it won't ever come undone" (4). It is these moments of simple humanity sprinkled throughout the many Biblical references and lofty ruminations on death that make this collection as accessible as it profound. There are just a few poems ("Isaac", "The Wise Men") where the meaning is a bit obscured, but I'm sure further exploration of the ancient text they are playing off of would help uncover deeper levels. Overall, I was completely engrossed in this voice and trusted where it was taking me because of this poet's well articulated struggle between life and death.
December 25, 2012
"Bedeviled,/ human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the words/ that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled/ among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life." The last lines of "The Meadow," the poem that introduced me to Marie Howe, prove prophetic. This volume expresses very bucolic themes of farm life intermingled with family stories and biblical resonances, reflections on suffering, marriage, bodies and death. "This is the past/where everything is perfect already," she writes in "How Many Times," yet this past is far from perfect. Her poetry haunts, and never more so than in "Death, the last visit," where her imagery takes an unexpected twist. "It will take you/ as you like it best, hard and fast as a slap across your face, / or so sweet and slow you'll scream give it to me give it to me until it does/". I recommend this volume and author.
December 31, 2021
"But this morning, a kind day has descended, from nowhere, / and making coffee in the usual way, measuring grounds / with the wooden spoon, I remembered, / this is how things happen, cup by cup, familiar gesture / after gesture, what else can we know of safety / or of fruitfulness?" (11)
i feel really guilty giving this collection only three stars given that i love marie howe's work more than nearly anyone else's but the fact is these poems are just so different, and more difficult i think, than all over her later work. it's in "What the Living Do" that her work really cracks open, becomes so blisteringly honest that it sends a thrill up my spine with every line. but there is still lots to love here. "From Nowhere," quoted above, was the poem that really caught me this time--the way she is so dedicated to the everyday. marie howe, patron saint of describing the actual thing, of "enduring the actual thing itself." it is so good here, and it gets soooooo much better.
i feel really guilty giving this collection only three stars given that i love marie howe's work more than nearly anyone else's but the fact is these poems are just so different, and more difficult i think, than all over her later work. it's in "What the Living Do" that her work really cracks open, becomes so blisteringly honest that it sends a thrill up my spine with every line. but there is still lots to love here. "From Nowhere," quoted above, was the poem that really caught me this time--the way she is so dedicated to the everyday. marie howe, patron saint of describing the actual thing, of "enduring the actual thing itself." it is so good here, and it gets soooooo much better.
August 1, 2021
“You have decided to live. This is your fifth / day living…. / Can we endure it, the rain finally stopped?”
Some of these poems reminded me a little of Louise Gluck’s: personal experiences that are held at a distance, as though what happened then was always going to happen, inevitable—necessary, even—a “truth” that the speaker puts forth but doesn’t quite believe, as she clearly still wrestles with her betrayed expectations and her own agency/responsibility.
I appreciate that this collection of poems feels like a complete package: repeated images and metaphors throughout (e.g. lambs, the beast) successfully establish a personal mythos, and the poems are carefully organized.
Be warned that the latter half deals with sexual assault in an obvious and graphic manner.
Favorites: Sorrow, Bad Weather, What Belongs to Us.
Some of these poems reminded me a little of Louise Gluck’s: personal experiences that are held at a distance, as though what happened then was always going to happen, inevitable—necessary, even—a “truth” that the speaker puts forth but doesn’t quite believe, as she clearly still wrestles with her betrayed expectations and her own agency/responsibility.
I appreciate that this collection of poems feels like a complete package: repeated images and metaphors throughout (e.g. lambs, the beast) successfully establish a personal mythos, and the poems are carefully organized.
Be warned that the latter half deals with sexual assault in an obvious and graphic manner.
Favorites: Sorrow, Bad Weather, What Belongs to Us.
September 9, 2007
Marie Howe's first book is filled with monsters at the stairs and in the mind and the every-day-real variety as well. She speaks with clues of personal catastrophe with an elegance only an amazing poet like her could muster and work with. I am in awe and can not wait for her next, and third, book to be released later this year.
February 4, 2020
This book confirmed what I had begun to expect, that Marie Howe is one of the most poignant and constructive contemporary poets I have come across. Her work is deeply arresting and honest. Her poems pull you in deep to her experiences, and startle you as, in them, you come face to face with your own. I very much look forward to rereading this collection and getting my hands on her other work.
June 25, 2020
I've seen Marie Howe read and have greatly enjoyed, and there are some poems, at the opening and towards the end in particular, that I was particularly wowed by, but there were others along the middle that didn't grab me the way the early and later poems did. Perhaps I need to keep reading Howe and come back to this one.
January 14, 2010
Again, a very special book of poems. See my reviews of her other two books of poetry, each published ten years apart: The Good Thief (1988), What the Living do (1998), and The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2008). I highly recommend all of Marie Howe's poetry.
March 10, 2008
I love this book so much.
March 30, 2008
There are five or six really great poems in this collection and another dozen stand-outs. We shouldn't be too greedy.
November 17, 2008
I like her poetry and its development over time. This is an early book, perhaps her first.
May 6, 2012
Marie Howe says it right in your face. She writes about experiences other people aren;t even aware of, or won't admit in a candid and often frightening way. I also love What the Living Do.
November 9, 2012
Spare, deep, abstract, humane.
September 6, 2016
wonderful, I'm a big fan of her work
April 27, 2015
4.5 omg babe!?!!?
Read
July 22, 2021so many gut-punching last lines
February 14, 2022
I have to say out of all Marie Howe’s works this was the one that was hardest for me to get through. It’s the last of hers that I’ve read and I’ve loved working backwards through her work but ultimately i think she’s grown so much throughout her collections that I can see how and why this is a first collection. I feel like I can see her finding her voice, not struggling to find it just, maybe experimenting with structure. She seems to have a set a rule of structure for these poems which ultimately i believe works against her, creates a sameness among the poems and also I’m not a big fan of structure just for structure’s sake. Religiously sticking to any one thing while writing poetry doesn’t allow for the poetry to live and breathe and show its own unique colors and also dulls the mind (mine specifically). The two line structure stressed me out but the poems not written like that felt like revelations, like breathing (Keeping Still especially).
But still, I loved this collection. I think it’s the one that leans the most into her family dynamic and to have a poetry collection about growing up in a religious family with 10 kids, i couldn’t ask for anything more……..me. And then to have a whole poem about rats in the wall!!!! How’d she KNOW!!!! “…how they shook their heads and said they’d never seen anything like it, so many” that killed me :)
Also “She didn't think God would be so specific, so delicate-inside her elbow, under her arm, the back of her neck and her knees. It's true, she struggled at first, until after the breaking. Then God was with her, and she was with him.” AAAAAH
And of course, “Bedeviled human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the words that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life” ….
Always and forever “tangled among them and terribly new” <3
But still, I loved this collection. I think it’s the one that leans the most into her family dynamic and to have a poetry collection about growing up in a religious family with 10 kids, i couldn’t ask for anything more……..me. And then to have a whole poem about rats in the wall!!!! How’d she KNOW!!!! “…how they shook their heads and said they’d never seen anything like it, so many” that killed me :)
Also “She didn't think God would be so specific, so delicate-inside her elbow, under her arm, the back of her neck and her knees. It's true, she struggled at first, until after the breaking. Then God was with her, and she was with him.” AAAAAH
And of course, “Bedeviled human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the words that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life” ….
Always and forever “tangled among them and terribly new” <3
June 4, 2024
“As we walk into words that have waited for us to enter them, so
the meadow, muddy with dreams, is gathering itself together
and trying, with difficulty, to remember how to make wildflowers.
Imperceptibly heaving with the old impatience, it knows
for certain that two horses walk upon it, weary of hay.
The horses, sway-backed and self important, cannot design
how the small white pony mysteriously escapes the fence every day.
This is the miracle just beyond their heavy-headed grasp,
and they turn from his nuzzling with irritation. Everything
is crying out. Two crows, rising from the hill, fight
and caw-cry in mid-flight, then fall and light on the meadow grass
bewildered by their weight. A dozen wasps drone, tiny prop planes,
sputtering into a field the farmer has not yet plowed,
and what I thought was a phone, turned down and ringing,
is the knock of a woodpecker for food or warning, I can’t say.
I want to add my cry to those who would speak for the sound alone.
But in this world, where something is always listening, even
murmuring has meaning, as in the next room you moan
in your sleep, turning into late morning. My love, this might be
all we know of forgiveness, this small time when you can forget
what you are. There will come a day when the meadow will think
suddenly, water, root, blossom, through no fault of its own,
and the horses will lie down in daisies and clover. Bedeviled,
human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the words
that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled
among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life.”
the meadow, muddy with dreams, is gathering itself together
and trying, with difficulty, to remember how to make wildflowers.
Imperceptibly heaving with the old impatience, it knows
for certain that two horses walk upon it, weary of hay.
The horses, sway-backed and self important, cannot design
how the small white pony mysteriously escapes the fence every day.
This is the miracle just beyond their heavy-headed grasp,
and they turn from his nuzzling with irritation. Everything
is crying out. Two crows, rising from the hill, fight
and caw-cry in mid-flight, then fall and light on the meadow grass
bewildered by their weight. A dozen wasps drone, tiny prop planes,
sputtering into a field the farmer has not yet plowed,
and what I thought was a phone, turned down and ringing,
is the knock of a woodpecker for food or warning, I can’t say.
I want to add my cry to those who would speak for the sound alone.
But in this world, where something is always listening, even
murmuring has meaning, as in the next room you moan
in your sleep, turning into late morning. My love, this might be
all we know of forgiveness, this small time when you can forget
what you are. There will come a day when the meadow will think
suddenly, water, root, blossom, through no fault of its own,
and the horses will lie down in daisies and clover. Bedeviled,
human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the words
that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled
among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life.”
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