Long Poems on Elizabeth Bishop

Abruptly waking on the wrong wing            
of her chrysalis cot, Megalopygidae            
is NOT having a good hair-day            
            
I mean, just look at that bed-head!            
             
Although ... everyone swears            
our little, riding, hooded            
moth-er carries more than a            
scintilla of chinchilla              
in those red, flannel genes            
she wears to the liquor store            
             
And soon, she will emerge            
from the...

She stood there,
slightly ominous with a red hood that covered most of her face,
with a long red coat that reached all the way down to her boots.
“What about her?” I asked him curiously “she looks really cool”,
“Her name is Mother Hood” he responded “but she’s a villain”.
“How can she be a villain is she’s a mother?” I asked surprised,
“Technically she’s not a mother” he said as we glanced at her stance,
menacing like something out of a comic book or a graphic novel.

Then I wondered,
why on earth he would conjure up such a villainous...

How in my heart I can picture you and me,
sitting upon the mantle smilingly
gazing out upon the world as it appears,  
an endless sea  
  
Burning our eyes like fire,  
salty and drawing our breath.  
For what would we wish,    
for Heaven in our midst,  
for losing ourself in this dream.  
   
For what we can hope for in this place,  
for that which we can only esteem.  
Setting suns and rising tides    
are cherished moments in our time,  
together are pondered frame by frame,  
but what can...

Alabaster bones reflect
 warmth of an obscure orb;    
their pallid membrane dormant    
  - lacklustre of any verdure    
   
Winter pursues first green    
  as gold,  but she escapes -    
  her youthful diligence scattering    
a surplus of burgeoning buds    
in her wake;    
   
tiny nubs, hardened as pearl-    
   moist, glistening in halflight    
of compressed dew    
   
I read once about Spring in Ohio;    
the belly of a tulip engorged with snow    
  a slow death of sharp...

Necessity in death and dying;
its cold nature a hardened breast
  of rocks nursing the evolution    
of time and time gone by  
   
Come the coastline in season  
  burning its way through glassy sand  
shattered shards of granules    
  sinking beneath its watery breath    
   
You remembered your mother    
  that Nova Scotian ice-rattle of lungs;    
their spindly pinnacles dissolving    
  under arthritic air brittle with bone  
   
You sit, serenading a seal    
  its interest lacking in...