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,…
Called widow makers because their branches fallduring droughts. They sever their own branches to conserve water, to save the whole tree. As if cuttingoff a hand to save a whole body. How does the tree decide what to drop? This one dropped two limbs,one onto a car. It only took the men a day to remove the…
No matter where I went todayI was not Michael.I was not even the shadowof my middle name.No name took my place,no name was asked.When I sat on a benchthinking of you, tryingto see your face,I was not Michael—I knew because the rainchose to fall nearbut not upon me,and it wasn’t to makean exception.People were walking…
Friday—first day of fall Two friends, two beers each. One has just held the hand of theother’s dying mama, regaling her with tales of her son’smisadventures. He’s moving to Houston the next day, far intothe flooding swamp. Mama is quiet, peaceful, pain-free. Go, shesays, go have a good time. After the two beers the friends…
No products in the cart.