Spruce woods drown in the bay's white metamorphosis -
And the dish of water
in the yard, where the dog slakes himself in spring -
When stars come, they catch in its shag of ice,
the great heaven caught in the small.
RICHARD FEIN
The Clouds
Land masses on the move, Balkan
cumuli. What was just Denmark...
elongating, warped into Italy.
Faces callop, or notch and jut.
Mussolini's jaw and forehead bulk in
a race under his ovoid fascist hat.
And then from all the way down here
a cloud can sunder to a flower.
This run of heaven's uncertain, wanton,
even Ovidian - that mottled, deviant
moon squatting in the afternoon sky,
like some homeless buttock.
One cloud, whiter than a sheet
fresh from the washer-dryer,
shades into a pearl-gray tint,
like the handle of Patton's revolver.
J.
S. VENIT
A Form of Telegram Cut from the Trees
Few paths return and then their burned fingers
make sense: the chisel tuning of the sentries
for noon to see so that time becomes another
voiceless occasion whose hymns include their
