Three Poems
STILL not finished review
but productive day and feeling
GÜT
like a fine mama
Couch
I finished it even before I went through passport control, really I finished it at JFK. It was in my hand while the man asked me questions, but I had already read the end, in line. When I shut the book, for a minute I was satisfied, or self-satisfied, you might say, because it was a long flight, and I had accomplished that, at least.
The Kettle Pond
When I was a boy we lived out in Mosfellsbaer, in the valley between Mount Esja and the hill we called Langahlið. It was only my mother and me in a small cement house; my father had moved in with his other family. Next to the house there was a small pool, called a kettle pond, of a type common in Iceland: round and deep, left over after a chunk of glacier melted. It had no inlet or outlet except the sky.
Anon
there is a lake that’s nervous
of anything too composed
there is always the horse
Three Poems
On this day of rest we require an emblem
proving the harps and small bells determined
to be released from the phonograph are
Wrecking Ball
With what stern determination I love
That wall!—: its red height so certain I must
Two Poems
This descent less decisive but at least a being called away, as the break of pool balls rolling to. Look up, a precise if not intentional direction: Blue Angels are famous in bereft landscapes.
Some Information About the Spartans
Sources say that one evening, at a dinner party, an Athenian woman was showing off one of the new tapestries she’d woven. A Spartan mother who happened to be at that party overheard this woman’s boasting, so she walked over to the tapestry to see what was the fuss. She lifted up the tapestry, put it back down, then called out for her four sons to join her inside.
The Gentle Cosmetics of Light
She had a way of winning people over. If this did not happen quickly there was a danger that her mind, set on rapid success, would thwart her; she would then have displayed her impatience, the interruption of her journey to self-realization would have shown on her face as nervousness and diminished the charm of her appearance.
Now This
In cloud without warning a passenger jet flew head-on into the side of a mountain, all fifty-three aboard perishing. Neither pilot had time to register the change of state, lucky for them. The abrupt near-vertical rock face misled the altimeter according to the black box, perhaps in a freak downdraft, with impact shortly before 5:07 a.m., just pre-dawn.
