(at a tourist shop on the interstate, north Florida) No, not ruddy, but pale rust cut with yellow-bone of ocean, a chunk of dawn sky. Across the knots and jags that swirl the crown: a gash. No, not the crack of beak or tooth, nor accident of surge and stone that leaves such remnants on
– after David Baker Small towns punctuate the highways leaving Newport, the county seat, their smallness a kind of grace. Everything has been left out to weather, a car on blocks, a plastic horse faded to dusty blue. To drive through is the prevailing viewpoint, though there are other ways to see the post office,
It was the delicate blue of the phrase that held him, like a neutral sky in which the sun rests, a white clay marble, burnished pearl by palms and sweat, the marble he found buried in the soil of the barn near the house where his father had once lived. He spat on it, rubbed
Bath, England, July 1992 Rain descends like afternoon. There is nothing to do but find a doorway, or a convenient shop, or walk into the English light, where girls in slickers of primary colors line up a covered stairway, waiting for the rain to stop, and we, the newly arrived, jacketed, amble past, our hat
