ghosted west to the sea and I missed my off ramplike most of the others who prayed to the fire godsoh please, not me, and I saw from a distancethe mean residue of burnt chaparral andblistered black trees, the carports and cribsof suburban tribes who fled with heads downfrom their choked memories and the burnt-out… Continue reading A Column of Smoke
Tag: #poetry
Of Shortened Time
Mine to have but not to keep—the long view, looking out at time,the future from a mountain top,the grand vista, the view non-stopof lofty peak and far outcrop—the only limit was the climb. I owned the possibilityof what was on the other sideof any hilltop, any year,across an ocean, beyond there,the future huge and little… Continue reading Of Shortened Time
Synchronicity
When you think of her one day,say, twenty years after you last saw her,and you had heard she let her hair gosnow white at age forty-somethingand you wonder if she's still workingand how old the twins are now. When you discover a trail the same daythat you didn't know anything aboutand it leads you across… Continue reading Synchronicity
An Old Woman Answers
Ask me my age and I'll tell you to startby counting the smile linescreasing my face;when that’s not enough,the cracks in my heart— sure, you can’t see thembut here in my chestthey ache like broken bonesfor old loves, for all the lost mothers,all the dogs gone; count all my gray hairs,count all my scars—the purple ones, too,where babies once… Continue reading An Old Woman Answers
Election 2020: An Allegory
It was a bloodless kill—the copper hammer barburied like fate and still gripping his flattened neck.One quick snapof an old wooden trap, the word “Victor”painted bright redjust below the spring and the trip hanging loose,the rat hanging dead.His eyes were black as unlit lamps,their fuse burned outin the metal of night just after we twistedthe… Continue reading Election 2020: An Allegory
Something about a Boardwalk
reaching over a salt marshthat invites me to hoverabove the great tangle of earthlike a mote that floatsover the madness. A bit of architecturethe forest offers of itself surrendering its sun-bleachedcedar smell up throughmy pilgrim feet, the perfect warmthof horizontal planksfragrant as the woodin a Swedish sauna whereI huddle naked, small. Here a mallard paddles… Continue reading Something about a Boardwalk
The Old Apple Tree
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” Ernest Hemingway, “A Farewell to Arms” A century of apples broke its back— in the dappled shade, that farthest tree— the trunk lies horizontal in the grass, too weak, for now, to battle… Continue reading The Old Apple Tree
At the Intersection with Wildness
We found a string of jewels never meant to berevealed on a Monday morning—not here, not on the lawn beneatha king palm tree on a city street— a luminous necklace of intestinesdangling from the spine of an animallocked in fetal position, fur trailinglike orange hair yanked out of a brush. You said too big for… Continue reading At the Intersection with Wildness
Dear Tree
That you could whisper through unseen webs and care for the earth with a mother's love— I didn't know, I just didn't know. That you could harbor so much in your cells, sequestering carbon that threatens the world— I didn't understand, I didn't know. That you could give even more than your heart,… Continue reading Dear Tree