a shandean commonplace book

 Do they think of me now in those strange Asian villages where nothing ever seemed quite human but myself and my few grim friends moving through them hunched in lines? When they tell stories to their children of the evil that awaits misbehavior, is it me they conjure? W. D. Ehrhart

The frescoed cloister is closed. No echo of omniscience escapes to wind or metaphor. A cottage holds three bowls, earthen and chipped, on a table made of planks smoothed by the surf. One holds buttermilk; another, tomatoes pale as moons; the third, eggs the color of sand. On the sill you would place a globe of ivory roses to echo the dolphin skull beyond the pane, and think how sonorous, how bold, this science of solitude.   Greg Hewett

The older we get, the deeper we dig into our childhoods, Hoping to find the radiant cell That washed us, and caused our lives                                                                            to glow in the dark like clock hands Endlessly turning toward the future, Tomorrow, day after tomorrow, the day after that,                                                                                                 all golden, all in good time Hiwassee Dam, North Carolina.                                                               Still 1942, Still campfire smoke in both our eyes, my brother and I Gaze far out at the lake in sunflame, Expecting our father at any moment, like Charon, to appear Back out of the light from the other side,                                  low-gunwaled and loaded down with our slippery dreams. Other incidents flicker like foxfire in the black Isolate distance of memory,                                                             cross-eyed, horizon-ha

New Year lucy by sam out of thelma limps down a ramp toward the rest of her life. with too many candles in her hair she is a princess of burning buildings leaving the year that tried to consume her. her hands are bright as they witch for water and even her tears cry fire     fire but she opens herself to the risk of flame and walks toward an ocean of days.   Lucille Clifton