Poetry

I want to thank you dear sister, dear clouder and mister,for your rain and your dew, your dew and your rainthat make so much flourish on my arid terrain, my robe of all flowers, my wells and my cisterns. Dear Body of Water, dear evaporation systems,I want to thank you for your fogs and your drizzles,your…

Maybe I was asleep in dawn, the grandestdame that ever unbent me like a willow. Isn’t nature my ma, my salve and solving?Soon the sun had arisen, leaving velvet marks on foxes secure in ferny hideouts,squirrels thronging for fallen acorns, branches torn from oaks in tornado watches, cloudycovers on me. And all my secrets scattered….

follow the back road’s          twist & turn, try to lose                    the red-winged blackbird’s scolding          lyrics—hurry on past—                    hum with summer insects’                              soundscape that doesn’t bitelike the mosquito woods          that root dark & twisted                    their shadow & light          move like the East Twin River                    that offers water                              for the Thompson Familyold growth maple that transforms          sunlight into oxygen                    inhale & you becomepart of this place

It was the summer, almost dawn,the windows open, curtains drawn.It was the kind of light that brushes pink bands along the dunesand opens its fingers through privetrubbing salt mist against the screen and bleaching the fox who dragsa bluefish tail and spine from hisjaws before he enters spirals of brambles and disappears.Sometimes, when the dark…

Today, without authority, I woke to morning birds.Without authority, today recalled the feral night that fled.Without authority, I listened to today’s trucks passing—       their diesel hauling diesel, hauling batteries, sent-back clothes.Without, today, authority, I pondered their drivers’ lives, their drivers’ children.Without authority, I stood above—too quiet to hear, today or any day—        root-mats of fungi.Without authority, I…

“Listen close,” she says in my ear, “I’m someonetoo, I’m someone telling you secrets, systems.”Dusk, my body, opens for tender breezes,broken but breathing. “Call your question, wait for the answer stormymornings, in the thunder,” she tells me. Forecastdry to drought to making my hurt eyes water,mountain to valley. “Talk to sky,” she tells me. I…

1 In 1953, what sprang up all over, took charge:new housing tracts, supermarkets, gas station grand openings,great smoggy pyres of bulldozed orange groves. I kept track from our creaky, high-water, clapboard bungalowat 402 West Elm. Pedaled my bike to all those great giveaways,all that free candy, all that gaga grand opening grandeur. On July 17,…

built 1879–1912 by Ferdinand Cheval, mail carrier and artist A postman builds a palace stone by stone.He hears a stone say where the site should be,carries it there, and carries others there.The site is his address.Thirty-three years it takes him, more or less.The message is delivered when he’s done.The spires rise stubbornly,as though ideals were…

                                                 I wonder what                                                            the smoke of a                                         dead swan’s body                                                          smells like.                                            Like the wind through                                                  a keyhole from                                      a different century.                                                   Like my dead                                            mother’s jacket, wet                                                   from rain and                                                             bombs.                                              Sometimes, I find a                                                    raindrop on its sleeve.                                           Some mornings, smoke                                                     rises from                                                            the collar.                                                    How a body                                         obediently burns                                                    …