POETRY IS OUT OF STYLE

But words are eating from my hand.
They follow me home,
Up the slick hill like a black gnome.
Or after I cast millet by the tree
And go, they feast,
So that I see quail prints
On any depth of snow.

So, I'll fing myself
Across the face of the moon
In a string of snowy poems
That will be melting soon.

The poems lie on just this side of sleep,
About my father, about the fight,
About the light I keep
Slightly dreamed, too lightly dreamed.

Always give the benefit of the doubt
Until the last round of light pales out.
Then give the foe the other side of your face.
Nothing he can write there that time won't erase.

(January 1984, Salt Lake City, Utah)