Mad Dogs of Trieste: New & Selected Poems, 1975-2000 Book

I put this on hold at the library thinking it was a book about Trieste and instead what I got was a book of poems by a poet I hadn't heard of. I often love these accidental library books, and this one I am particularly enjoying as 1) I've been wanting to read a bit more poetry these days 2) she writes a lot about river, sea, sky, land, island, birds and our daily human free-fall into mythology. I appreciate her movement from small moments to vast landscapes and back again.

Here are a few I particularly enjoyed.

Plaza De Armas

I make my way
a rocking boat down the pavement
penicillin poisoned
swollen joints
my neck stiff with anchors

I am slowly circling, waiting
for the moon
waiting for the face of Huascaran
waiting for an homage of flowers
to sit in, and watch
the sunset

Huascaran wears
pink
on the last skirt of glacier
There are two ways to do it:
one is to sit and love and watch,
the other is to climb

The Geminids

I can see it in the set of furniture
the curve of ornaments against the wall
a stepping off place from what is
known to what is not
and the body there in its water
swimming
picks up the threads
ferries the mind home listening
for meteors
as though a chord were struck
and one saw it, green
some vast piano.



Himalayan Air In The City

Odd this night to have risen
to have lost a glove, to have
sunk into mountains, into forests
and the forest's edge

People luminous over thin streets,
quaking bodies, ecstatic hands
two visions of the Tree of Life
from the bat tribe

Show me the bat who is crucified
to his wings
and I recognize
acorn, serpent, seed in the furrow

In back alleys of the mountain town
we sat crosslegged, calling
the stars by name, the radiant
entities conjoined in a figure eight

and not an eight
and not conjoined. A cup
with a golden rim.
See? You forgot.

Let me along with ten thousand
deities bless the depths of the forest
lose my gloves in a thicket
peer into the well

see no reflection.


Islands of the Sun

When horizons are blurred
and you cannot see where
shore and sky meet

you could be on any island
off the Irish coast,
in the Aegean Sea

a line of sailboats
leaves the port
in a stiff wind from the north

and all enclosures
seem like a waste
of time

they round the lighthouse
at the tip of the lizard's tail
and fan out

there will be fish
in all the kitchens
tomorrow.