CALLING

Woken by
the always less than

full-strength
angel

fists clenched
mouth still open

undergone

you had to look around
____

I swallowed I began to
swallow river-bank

stone root stump
graft of who lay back?

whose plough?
____

To separate the words: black furrow

ox axe spine
inconstant constant

gold streaks straggling fortune
sweet juice in your mouth

for what?--

just there below the shag of
____

doublings where the blade

shears through each
further version
____

death each way
____

white scales
the high unsentencing
____

set free (his representing
power of another kind)
____

before the end
I cut the whole wings

from my heart.




THE CHANGE

Appearance
clings to

being

my defense

light steps
braided

animal

above the ridge

endured

my doing as
his tongue

required

said thorn

hedge flickers

will remain

I rushed gray

terraces

unshielded the

scatter-shot

majority

hauled off
& swung

let it come
down

our second
shoreline

heaped
hazing into

bush the late

regime

robed in
the chambers

sworn.





These poems, as well as three additional poems by Peter Sacks, will appear in Conjunctions:33, Crossing Over, to be published Fall of 1999.