Poems

like baubles
hung from branches
of an evergreen -
shimmer in the light.
Thoughts -
like breath blown
into molten glass
until fragile walls
frame the air -
become words

Exile

If you spend three years
or four there in that place
where oranges and grapefruit
hang their globes in trees
and scarlet poppies
populate the fields
and rosemary grows
around the ruins of towns
of castles Crusaders built
and white sand still
separates the sea
from mountain peaks
- if you live in that place
where the span of a life is less
than in the land of your birth -
does it affect how long you'll live
the way researchers say
each cigarette smoked
shaves eleven minutes
from your life?

And what about six months
spent in a solitary cottage
on a wild coast whose
few inhabitants
still cling to stone or sand
the way their mothers'
mothers' mothers did
although now there is
more to eat than potatoes
and fuel oil supplements the turf
they still save every spring -
the bogs slaned and chunks set up
to dry then piled in little mounds
and later motored home
instead of tossed in baskets
balanced across the backs of asses
- how does that lonely
lovely time change
your life?

^

Biography