Chard DeNiord Poems

The windows are dressed in feathers where the birds have flown against
them,
then fallen below into the flowers where their bodies lie grounded, still,
...

He lowered his head and darted through
the grass, flushing a hen from off her nest,
then zeroing in on the day-old chicks
...

My sister and I went out to them with sugar
cubes and bridled their heads when they bent down
to eat from our palms. We led them over
...

For Ethan Canin
I sat on the dock at dusk and spoke
to the fish who swam beneath me
...

The nurse calls to tell me on Sunday evenings
how he's doing.
How he's holding his own in front
...

It's not paradise I'm looking for
but the naming I hardly gave a thought to.
Call it the gift I carried in my loneliness
...

The guests are floating in the lobby,
walking but also gliding to the front desk
then away, checking in, checking out,
...

I'd smoke cigars all day and into the night
while I wrote and wrote without
any hope or slightest assurance
...

"All I did was write them down
wherever I was at the time, hanging
laundry, baking bread, driving to Illinois.
...

She breathed a chill that slowed the sap
inside the phloem, stood perfectly still
inside the dark, then walked to a field
...