Poetry

The Meadow

As we walk into words that have waited for us to enter them, so the meadow, muddy with dreams, is gathering itself      together, and trying, with difficulty, to remember how to make      wildflowers. Imperceptibly heaving with the old impatience, it knows for certain, that two horses walk upon it, weary of hay. The horses, sway-backed…

Winter Words

When the young farm laborer steals the roses for his wife we know for certain he'll find her beyond their aroma or softness. We can almost feel with how soft a step he approaches the cottage there on the edge of the forest darkening even before supper, not wanting to give away the surprise, which…

On The Charms of Absentee Gardens

Let's say the residents had other engagements. They've gone off playing flutes made from wingbones of the golden eagle. They've ascended to the abalone heavens, and left alone, we prettify the long ago. Aren't gardens most fetching when nobody's home? When you can track the sunflower's tambourine face twirling toward the sun. The Anasazi angled…

From Nowhere

I think the sea is a useless teacher, pitching and falling no matter the weather, when our lives are rather lakes unlocking in a constant and bewildering spring. Listen, a day comes, when you say what all winter I've been meaning to ask, and a crack booms and echoes where ice had seemed solid, scattering…

Blue

Dawn. I was just walking back across the tracks toward the loading docks when I saw a kid climb out of a box-car, his blue jacket trailing like a skirt, and make for the fence. He’d hoisted a wet wooden flat of fresh fish on his right shoulder, and he tottered back and forth like…

Ferrying horses

This is only a short trip but the horses don't know that blindfolded beneath the deck. They stand tense and steaming, I know their eyes are walled and bright beneath the cloth. Their hard breathing is my asking what should I do? and telling myself nothing. The ship's horn, a sudden shift; it doesn't take…

Worlds Apart

I can't help but believe the killdeer, so deftly has it led me, dragging its own wings away from a poorly hidden nest before clenching back into flight, and I can't help but believe in a love that would make itself so vulnerable for its young. It is hard to understand, but only by leaving…

Stories from the train

From the train among row after row of empty buildings you see a single curtained window, an orange bottle on the sill, and a small child's face watching sparks from the tracks. You can only start to answer this after you've passed it, when the train is already pulling into another town where another child…