From “The Scout”:

In bronze you sit,
safe now from the obsessions of decline,
your pony beneath you,
your hand held to your head,
you gaze exhausted
at the city that has risen against the plain,
as if this earth,
in unfaithful partnership,
had pulled a pistol.

From “Running Up The Eno”:

The peace in this park
depends upon
something inside of us
turning—
away from the grail,
to the holy that is present
always.
Pray for rabbis
in Eastern Europe who stayed.
For the unsnapped pictures
of Indian life.
For the inward journey,
this river,
whose serenity is enough.

From “New Jersey, Mon Amour”:

            …it seems reasonable to say that on some
painfully necessary level, the loving of New Jersey is the loving of your retarded uncle—
            that in accepting New Jersey you are accepting the pits and boils
of your own soul, the ones you will have to show St. Peter at the gates of heaven
            in order to prove you walked this earth as a man.

From “White Blues”:

Having been raised in an age when the world’s economy favored the pale American,
            it is not so difficult to see how you can come to the blues from
the other side—not from the tedium of physical labor, but from the agony of watching
            a family destroy itself … the irony in human nature that surfaces whenever
the food and the shelter have been taken care of.

From “Westering Angels”:

Oil will disappear from hear eventually, and these towns will gleam again,
            send paddle boats into clean water. And our children will no longer
have to assume the spanking of abandoned siblings before they’ve heard
            of the Constitution, but will grow strong and wily, and pass on man’s victory
over his own need to be the victor… a memory of when this titanic passage
            was thick with black lubricant, and the wizardry resorted to made things fast—