To Emily Bronte


Eleven years old and sunk in the red velveteen
chair at the Fox Bay Theater, I absorbed
the raw sculpture of Penistone Crag,
bracken and gorse, the peat
blanketing the Yorkshire moors.  Heathcliff
with his sea-green eyes, black cape swirled
around him, how tall and alarmingly
handsome he looked.
At Catherine’s grave he cried, you wrote:  
I cannot live without my life,
desire held hostage in his eyes,

my heart held stunned in my chest.
Years later, I return to your words;
travel to the stone-
flagged floors of your home;
your desk-box saved under glass,
its lining worn, purple velvet
splotched with red sealing wax.
Walking the rocky footpath towards swells
of purple heather, I remember the words
of the local stationer who saw you
returning one evening:  her countenance was lit up
by a divine light.  I imagine
I hear your skin
brush mine, whisper what you know:
the silence, the stars
that burn through the page.
Hone the hours to their core—you might have said--
wind and poem, passion and moor.

      -first published in WE LIT THE LAMPS OURSELVES (Salmon Poetry)

At Keats' Grave
Non-Catholic Cemetary, Rome.

I found the granite lyre,
the raised letters:  Here lies one 
whose name was writ in water.
Among the cypress and pine, loud birdsong,
and dark purple iris beside his stone,
a handful of withered roses lay sprawled,
a white rock etched with initials.
I rummaged in my pockets, 
found no flower or bead,
no chip of amber like the one I'd left
for my grandmother.
All I had was my new pen,
filled to the top with an ink
that wrote like early twilight.  
I wedged it just below 
Feb. 21, 1821, planted it--there.
Let the earth carry my message.  


 -AT KEATS' GRAVE was first published in Naugatuck River Review, and is forthcoming in my collection AN INK LIKE EARLY TWILIGHT (Salmon Poetry).