Some Thing in the Bed

Poems

There is a long window that doesn’t open
overlooking the parking lot. In its
recess, a black leggy thing, weightless
and still, lays on its side. It is
to fly as the thing in the bed is to
my mother — holding only the shape
and none of the spontaneity. She too is
weightless, buoyant in the heavy air,
adrift in familiar halls — fourteen
disbelieving eyes stare at a shucked husk.

Blind Man Sleeping at The Great Machipongo Clam Shack

Poems

What do you dream about, blind man? Voices
coming from below the ground, long canes,
longer than the world is deep?

Do you imagine you have experienced sight,
a great salty yawn spilling cracked oysters,
each unique odorous texture a vision?

I wish you would wake and tell me your dreams,
in words sufficient enough to remove my vision,
forever in the way of what you see.