The Kingdom of Gewgaw
1976
Comb-bound: 66 pp.
Published: 2000
This volume’s forty-three chronologically arranged poems throw us into the "abandoned landscape" of the poet’s psyche. Leaving his wife and child behind, he becomes "angry Ahab," drowning in "an ocean of cow-filled solitude" as he tacks along the highway’s cement sea lanes in quest of leviathans, his "eyes blurred by salty tears," lamenting that only his poems have survived his transformation.
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Snow
Long after I've finished this lonely trip,
I still see snow seeding oceans,
Growing in fields tilled in a somnolent sky.
White weeds streaking toward freedom
Emit sweet, secret scents of poppy,
Encourage an enfeebled mind to leave toil.
But the joyous clairvoyance that accompanied me,
Once, on explorations to the soul's lighted core
Has diminished. The need to grope blindly
Through low-hung night entirely by myself
Releases off-white, mosquito-like furies
On the air. I cough dust beat from God's rug.
I've become the snow this country withholds
From the sun, an organism of driven flakes
Frozen in shade cast by fast years
Reaching across a face of living crystals
Rubbed smooth by seasons exchanging places.
Soon, even tenacious drifts will evaporate.
