A daffodil from Emily’s lot
I lay beside her headstone
on the first day of May.

January 29th

Black-white-black the flock of scaup
pushing hard against whittles of the tide.

 

Death invited to break its horns
on the spread
cloth. To drop its head

For years I have enjoyed teaching May Swenson’s subtle poem “Dear Elizabeth,” an intricate meditation on sexuality and exoticism, though I have found my classes startled when I claimed it constituted a kind of causerie between the two lesbian poets about their situation as lesbians, as poets.

The property must belong to someone: I come upon berry patches and fruit trees in the general wildness, and tracks of cattle in the boggy grass by a stream, but there are no fences and the last farmhouse I passed was a mile away.