Talking into the ear of a donkey: poems

Acknowledgments

1:

Ravens hiding in a shoe

Courting forgetfulness

Keeping our small boat afloat

Paying attention to the melody

Longing for the acrobat

Nirmala's music

Frogs after dark

Sympathies of the long married

Blind old man

Father and son

2:

Rains

Roof nail

Day in late June

Dealing with parents

Sense of getting older

Old fishing lines

Walking out in the morning

Poetry reading in Maryland

Lost trapper

Starting a poem

I have daughters and I have sons

Mourning dove's call

Taking into the ear of a donkey

Wanting sumptuous heavens

3:

Family thing

Water tank

Box of chocolates

Keeping quiet

Day the dock comes in

Morning pajamas

That problem in the family

4:

Heard whispers

Slim fir seeds

Big-nostrilled moose

Tristan and Isolde

Turkish pears in August

Thoreau as a lover

In a time of losses

So much time

Grackles

Turtle's eggs

For the old Gnostics

Pheasant chick's

Orion and the farmstead

Silent in the moonlight

Ramage for the mountain

What is sorrow for?

Lovers in the river

Camels

Limits

5:

Sunday afternoon

Teapot

Ready to sleep

Housefly

My father at forty

My mother

It's morning again

Something to do for Aunt Clara

Man at the door

Hermit

Poetry reading at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas

6:

Uncertainty

Threshers

Longing

What did we see today?

Long-legged birds

Hearing music at dawn

Hawk in his nest

My mournful room

About my father

Smoke-stained fingers

What the old poets failed to say.