Reginald Gibbons Poems

The thick-walled room's cave-darkness,
cool in summer, soothes
by saying, This is the truth, not the taut
cicada-strummed daylight.
...

Down in the blue-green water
at nightfall some selving shapes
float fluorescing, trance-dancing,
trembling to the rhythm of
...

for Gloria
Imagining, on a long walk
between two Greek towns,
those Turkish prisoners the guidebook
...

Something needs to be done—like dragging a big black plastic sack through the upstairs rooms, emptying into it each waste basket, the trash of three lives for a week or so. I am careful and slow about it, so that this little chore will banish the big ones.
...

In homage to Osip Mandelshtam
I am sure I do
not believe we can
move a pencil through
...

Sleepless
in the cold dark,
I look
through the closed dim
...

The loop of rusty cable incises
its shadow on the stucco wall.
My father smiles shyly and takes
one of my cigarettes, holding it
...

The children are eating lunch at home on a summer weekday when a man comes to the door and asks their mother if she has anything that needs fixing or carrying or any yardwork he can do. They chew their food a little dreamily as, with her back straight and her voice carefully polite,
...

Someone has left us now
before we have even touched hands.

Getting lost in the pity of it
...

Where moonlight angles
through the east-west streets,
down among the old
for America
tall buildings that changed
...