some of us are bog people
we live with the snails and the maggots
making bacteria
we're suckers for substance
the dirt speaks to us
some of us are bog people
we hang with the microorganisms
making pilgrimages
we're slimey silt and silage
full-tilt and raw
the dirt wants us

dig it or dig it not
we can't help it
some of us are just bog people

Maybe I don't know who I love
Maybe I won't know for sure
Maybe I'm not supposed to know
And maybe that's okay.
Because maybe I love a boy
Because maybe I love a girl
Because maybe I love both
And maybe that's okay.

Swimming the English Channel,
struggling to make it to Calais,
I swam into Laura halfway across.
My body oiled for warmth,
black rubber cap on my head,
eyes hidden behind goggles,
I was exhausted, ready to drown,
when I saw her coming toward me,
bobbing up and down between waves,
effortlessly doing a breaststroke,
heading for Dover.  Treading water
I asked in French if she spoke English,
and she said, "Yes, I'm an American."
I said, "Hey, me too," then asked her out for coffee.

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

Late December: my father and I
are going to New York, to the circus.
He holds me
on his shoulders in the bitter wind:
scraps of white paper
blow over the railroad ties.

My father liked
to stand like this, to hold me
so he couldn't see me.
I remember
staring straight ahead
into the world my father saw;
I was learning
to absorb its emptiness,
the heavy snow
not falling, whirling around us.

He lifts her off her feet
And he pulls her back inside,
She had come out of that closet
Weeks ago.

He grips her sides
And moves in close
With his heartbeat
Matching hers.

She lives within this moment
And she never wants an ending.
She's wrapped up in his need
For all she has.

She tries to pull him with her,
Bring him outside of that small room
So dark and closed and empty
In her heart.

But as she puts her lips on his
And he begins to move them downward
She loses all the thoughts
Within her head.

He accepts her and she knows it
And that makes her love him deeper
But he cannot understand
The way she feels.

When she's outside of that small space
She can feel all that desire
For the strength of his hand
And the small of her back.

But when she's back inside that closet
He is all that is within her
And she knows it would be easier
To just stay hidden up in there.

But it cannot be that simple
Not for her or for another
And she knows that she can't hide it
For this long.

So she'll let out all these feelings
In that small and empty closet
As he lifts her off her feet
And he pulls her back inside.