Axes

picking up the bright pieces
Of Christ in the faces of rodents,

On silver dish,
And shine that kettle of copper

can be struck from rock to make heart's waste

while on spotted branch of the sycamore
two black rooks hunch and darkly glare,

We take a backward look.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.

Hung out over hazard, over hooves
Loud on earth's bedrock. Almost thrown, not
Thrown: fear, wisdom, at one: all colors

The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers

And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.

Eavesdropper
Your brother will trim my hedges!

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat

Levering letter flaps,
Scrutinizing the fly
Of the man's pants

You have one baby, I have two.

For small charge.

Then spews it back.

Parliament Hill Fields
On this bald hill the new year hones its edge.

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe

Mountaining them on spread newspaper.

You said you would kill it this morning.