Footprints

Frost, white and silent lay On the curled black asphalt blanket Of shingles on my neighbor’s roof. Below, the family lies sleeping, While the footprints of Of dawn trace The minutes, the seconds, The individual ticks Of a clock keeping pace With the register on my wall, Heat covering Me while mocking The cold, quiet, … Continue reading Footprints →

Finding Time

County Road 79, Fieldstones stacked, A bridge over the ditch holding Dark water, a tangled ball of barbed wire, And a Coke can pink from the sun. With the slow sway of seventy years, I cross it to a far off place, In another time. White barn leaning Into the slight breeze from the east, … Continue reading Finding Time →

The Button Bush

When the blue arch of September deserved to be called heavens, its high streaks and bulging billows auguring storms in the heat; I climbed down to the strip of land between the levee and the river, where maples lift silver to the wind, and willows often bend to trail their branches in the sun by the water, and homeless … Continue reading The Button Bush →

Eagle Marsh

Spits of rain, and willow leaves spin bright bodies down onto mud and dun-colored weed. Knotted, ancient-looking angles of button bush hold up yellow leaves, or few, or none; their sycamore- buttons dangle. A crane, white like heavens, bends its flight to the gracious air, stoops to the water's billows, head tucked like a cockpit, body shaped to … Continue reading Eagle Marsh →

Mother, Father

I am planted like seeds in the heavy-lidded brown dirt, moist, farther from the surface than you scratch. Scattered in plots connected: water, worry, sunlight, songs earwormed since the opening of the wound and my coming from it, never letting it scab. Picking constantly—digging. Watching the blood so that it can’t use the magic of … Continue reading Mother, Father →

From Her View Only

There is something spoken without words, shared only with the eyes. A vision cast then bid farewell in seconds. Maybe we knew before hello. Goodbye shall always linger within the best-dealt hand. Take it with you for I cannot bare to keep this alone within my thoughts. True beauty speaks without words and lingers within … Continue reading From Her View Only →