Albert Gold­barth​’s imag­i­na­tion has the unique pen­chant for a cer­tain absur­dist insis­tence on the delight we can derive from strange­ness. The poet hears his wife singing and thinks of a horse’s skull. This seems like a pre­lude to inti­ma­tions of mor­tal­i­ty (the poem’s title is, after all, ​“Tough Day: Clo­sure”), but then, what hap­pens is not quite humor, but dogged joy, ​“as if the brain/​is deter­mined to sing and fly”. And the image that stays with me is this one, a bird ris­ing out of a horse’s skull.