This fellow just turned up one day at the eastvillage.com  guestbook.  It is my  opinion (albeit uneducated) that he is one of the best poets I ever read.  In particular,  his poem "Seed" actually made me gasp out loud.  Do check it out.  (And I thought that I loved trees).
 

"Recovery"

Drawn by a distant warmth,
the Monarch unfolds herself
from the silk of her sleep
and stumbles the length of a branch
before learning to glide
to the darkened window
of a grey-stoned building
silenced for the dying.

Unaware of glass,
she floats through it
and settles on the gentle rise
of a wrist where pale tubing
weeps within a threadlike vein.

Lashes flutter mildly like wings,
and the butterfly goes to them,
landing softly on the bridge
of the nose.

She discovers her own image
reflected beneath the lid,
and passes through the eye
to find the soul's wick
flickering in the last
of its shadows.

She fans the darkness into light;
cold ashes whirl away to memory,
and the tip of the child's tongue
drifts like a leaf
to taste the sweet dust of wings
fallen iridescent on her lips.

 

"Private Room"

They've allowed her to stay the night,
to sit in a metal chair
and guard her husband's sleep,
to watch the gauze darken at his throat,
the hole in his neck
rising pink around the rim.

Sometime near dawn, she leaves him
and heads for the double doors
at the end of the hall;
once inside, her fingers fly
over the operating table.

On the floor
she crawls in small circles
about the center of the room;
she is sure she will find
the patch of skin they took.
She will know it by the stubble
left on the outer side
when she shaved him hastily
herself this morning.

When she finds it, she will go to him.
She will hold the wafer up to the window,
up to the cleansing sun;
she will lick the edges and secure it
to the sides of the hole
healing open like a nostril.

 

"Seed"

I knelt at the stump
and kissed its inner circle
before standing to undress:
the sandals of vine, a robe
the brown of aged trees.

I saw an open place
where my lips had been,
like the mouth of a chalice.

I felt its width and depth
and went to my hands and knees
for twigs and bits of earth
and dropped them in the hole.

I scanned the forest
and lay across the stump,
my body balanced, shaken
by spasms that left me limp.

I arched my back until my hair
met the soles of my feet,
the trunk fused to my abdomen.

I felt my hands rise,
fingers fluttering
in a green blur; my head
bursting into growth,
hair trembling to leaf,
flesh curling into bark;
bird songs filling the air;
a rush of wings
sealing my lids to sight.

 

"Cook Out"

I rise from the sun-deck
to enter the thicket
in search of a bouncing ball,
and find instead a grenade
rolling toward a thatched hut.

And I go deep within it:
my eyes dropping to a sling,
hung from criss-cross poles,
supporting a child, sleeping
above the settling ball.

The concussion blows the roof off
like a puff of dandelion fuzz:
gently, not to waken the infant
wrapped in flame and floating
slowly, head over heels through leaves.

I watch until he burns away in the sun.

 

"Night Sky"

O, Father,
there on the tallest star,
I promised you too much
for my own good. I cannot go
daily to your wife.

I try, instead, to stop by
once a week to wheel her down
the double ramps in time
for lunch, if I'm intact enough
to get beyond my own impending age
which closes in like winter chill
about my legs.

She is in great comfort: fed
well, bathed lovingly, talked to
and watched, given flowers
to arrange and plants to keep
alive. I am never

Her son; sometimes a brother,
a schoolmate whose name
she can't recall, and once,
a month ago, I spent an hour
as her father. She thinks
she is at home, that you
are about to enter every door.

© Copyright 1978 - 1985


 

"At The End Of Sleep"

It is always the same: he is far upstate
where the roofs and lawns
are collecting snow.

The sunporch light
is holding his father's profile
to the window. His mother
is turning away
from the oval frame of the front door.

He hurries away unseen,
feeling he has business farther down
the block, but stops at the edge
of the next driveway and goes back,
taking the privet hedge
in one leap, dragging the left foot
as he used to do in the high hurdles
at the cinder track
on the other side of town.

He lands close to the drain vent, its cap
an inch or two above the grass;
he kneels and sees it is the same
perforated lid he scarred on Saturdays
with the handmower.

He taps at the window
next to his father's chair and reads
his lips as he mouths the nickname he used
for a lifetime. He puts his hand
flat to the glass, expecting his father
to do the same, measuring hand
to hand, but his hand is alone, the fingers
feeling the grit that swirls in the air
in that part of the country.

He looks deep into the house. The rooms
are empty. His father's head is cut
from cardboard and stuck to the glass.
A single dab of flour paste, still wet
as milk, begins its run
down the cold clear pane between them.

"The End Of Things"

Supper tonight was served by strangers
in a truckstop far from the kitchen sink
where his mother stood watching him back out
over gravel, too close to the oak he scraped
more than once on those late nights they warned
him about. Perhaps he's had enough.

His room is fast becoming a shrine: clean linen,
homework arranged near his books, fresh flowers
at the door, new pajamas folded at the pillow
he should come home to, and the lamp: Its limp Christ,
with a 7 1/2 watt candle in His fist, nailed
to the window jamb.

The father wakens in the night and carries a drink
upstairs to disturb the room. He feels the bed,
empty in the half-light. He flicks off the lamp
and studies the shapes of his son's belongings,
hoping to find things missing, but they are there.

The B-29 they built together
holds on to the sky by a thumbtack the size
of a button on a puflcoat, the one his son wore
the last time he saw him slamming out
through the pantry, his answer cut off
by the banging of the door.

He needs another drink, but lies down
instead, his head sinking in
where his son's should be. In what approximates
sleep, he hears a voice behind the bed.
He rouses to speak his name, to coax him back home,
but sunlight comes to wash it all away.

He scatters the homework and curses his wife
and her fastidious shrine. Downstairs
it is the same. No one will look at him. They know
he's been drinking. He leaves them alone
and goes off to his den, to his tall window,
his son behind the mower, the hedge
fencing him in on three sides. But it is only
a tree moving in the snow.

He hears his wife and daughter in the hall,
their quiet voices keeping the walls from falling in.
They shout Goodbye and leave for the day.
He feels better already. He pours himself a drink
and heads for the yard, in search of kindling
felled by the winds that worked all night. He sets
the empty glass at the edge of the woods and goes in.

Loaded to the chin, he comes to the front
of the garage and lays a fire as his son would
have it: twigs tangled like a bird's nest,
sticks forming an open box, and narrow limbs
the size of rake handles to finish it off right
in the middle of the driveway.

Inside for a clean glass, bourbon, and ice.
And then the flame: the first strike does it.
The kitchen match goes white and orange and blue.
But he is gone, back inside,

Upstairs at the window, jamming the storm sash up
as far as it goes. And now it begins. Here come
the pillows and sheets and blanket. A shelf wrenched
from the closet wall. The straightback chair
breaks when it hits the cement. The desk
is too big and takes the windowframe with it:
glass and putty sailing like ice and snow.
The single mattress bounces when it hits. The box
spring cracks once and falls to its side.

And now a wait while the rug is rolled
and lowered by its fringe.

Here, the pajamas unfolding. Homework flying
like kites, books by the dozen flapping
to the ground. The model plane is off its tack,
heading for the fire.

Drawers and their sweaters are on their way,
a closet floor of shoes and boots, shirts, jeans
by the armful, jackets and ties, two stereo speakers,
a double rack of albums, lacrosse sticks
and helmet, bedsides and headboards, a clock
trailing its cord, a hockey stick and floor lamp
with shade still attached, a calendar

"Calling Home"

He dials his dead father's house
where timers go off at noon, at dusk,
at nine, allowing the gooseneck lamp
to come on in the den, the radio
to sift through the kitche walls
and awaken the neighbor's dog,
who no longer waits at the side door
for scraps.

Six rings -- Mother
would have answered by now,
but she's kept in a vest that is tied
to a chair In the rest home he chose
from a list when he was in town.

Twenty rings, and counting:
the pilot light flickers in the stove,
a cobweb undulates
imperceptibly albove the sink, the crystal
sternware chimes in its breakfront.

He closes his eyes and listens.
He would like to say something,
but there is nowhere
to begin.

"Laid Off"

The woman behind the loan desk says No
for the last time and waits for him to leave.
He stands and makes sure his sleeve
brushes against a stack of file folders,
leaving a clutter of paper at her feet;
he doesn't look back.

Out on the steps, he hears the guard
locking the doors behind him. Three o'clock.
He buttons the only button left on his coat
and straightens the paperclip he took
when her back was turned. He sticks it
in his collar, feeding it
through the flap on the other side,
twisting it back on itself,
against the wind, before heading north
along the tracks.

The rain has turned to sleet, and he looks
for a stopping place. A tavern roof rises close
to the roadbed, but he knows
he's not welcome there.

He takes the wad of deposit slips he stole
from the glass bin and lets it fly,
dozens of giant flakes
coming back in his face, a few settling off
to his left, dark down the sloping gravel
where the stagnant water waits.

He's soaking through but can almost see
the tunnel beneath the interstate; if no one
is there, he can get a few minutes rest.
It's no place to stay too long; beatings
are as common as dogs.

He tries taking two ties at a time,
but settles for a shorter stride, squinting
his way to the underpass.

The walls are wet from seepage, but he's safe
from sleet. He squats on the foot-ledge
and pulls his arms close to his chest, blowing
into one fist and then the other, his cheeks
puffed and blotched, his toes working themselves
like fingers in wet mittens, the girders
rumbling overhead under the weight
of holiday traffic leaving the city.
He's tempted to stay the night

But hears them in time to make a run for it,
three toughs heading home for supper, shouting
him out, swearing to take his shoes
the next time they catch him napping.

He stops beyond the bend and sits down
on the track, the same roadbed, the same
water, blacker in the dusk. He hears
the train downtrack, the engine light closing in.

He decides to get out of the way in time
to watch the commuters
dry behind glass. He feels for the largest stone
he can find, and holds it lightly, ready
to shatter a window, but lets it fall
down the ravine, the caboose trailing
its red lantern, pitching him back into darkness.

He sits on the rail trembling
beneath him, the sleet becoming snow. He curls
out his tongue, allowing flake
after flake to land and dissolve; others stay
whole on his eyelids, closed against the sky.

He wishes he had gloves
and a pair of buckle boots -- the ones
he had when he was growing up, when
his mother would turn them half inside out
to warm over the register.

He can feel the flannel lining, the gloves
supple and light on his hands,
the new smell of leather
that means everything.