Occurence of White

First thriving, then failing to thrive

at the end

before the end

the ghost freighter out of Fall River

ghost railroad car out of Chicago

raked my skin and your skin in white silence.

Woman, Leaving

You waited 4 Ever

     Don't listen for words here

no more than the words the grass speaks or

the mouth of the lake

     Then came

an undone stitch of light

You tore it

open and flew

Cool Loneliness

He is sitting there calmly

in a back room

writing on a big

sheet with charcoal

in his big capital letters

inkwell          daybreak

cowboy         stairway

This page says

What you want,

that you've got.

JEAN VALENTINE won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her first book, Dream Barker, in 1965. Author of seven other books of poetry, including most recently Growing Darkness, Growing Light (1997) and The River at Wolf (1992), she teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, the Graduate Writing Program at New York University, and the 92nd Street Y.

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