victim,
prophesies winter.
Button-drum
seed pods fall
from the hollyhocks,
waiting for snow,
waiting for spring.
Rainy Night
Near midnight, a tree frog
croaks under my window.
Science claims his croaking
marks his territory.
The frog and I know better.
He sings because he wants to.
The Moon Pretends
The moon pretends
it doesn’t mind
bouncing over black
cloud tatters
the wind scattered
across the sky.
I know the moon
is pretending, because
its face is green.
Poppies
June poppies,
orange and yellow,
are blooming
in Denver yards.
They honor no dead.
This is not Flanders.
They bloom for joy
that summer has come.
The Old Ewe
Rain on the shed
sizzles like a kettle
beginning to boil.
The old ewe
scrapes crippled hooves
through the dung on the floor.
She begs the mercy
of a bullet in her ear.
A mourning dove
cries once in the rain.
By the River
I went down to the river to see
the sunlight waltz across the ripples.
The wind scattered the leaves of a tree
hanging over the water. A man
leaning against the trunk ate an apple.
He gazed west as if to see Japan.
I asked if he thought the fish could think.
“Fish can’t think in rippling water,”
he said, “it hypnotizes them.”
He tossed the core. I watch it sink.
“On moonless nights the fish think better.
No ripple glitter distracts their minds.”
He left. I watched the river turn pewter
as clouds flew in on the evening winds.
First Funeral
We commonly visited our dead in May
We brought them irises from our garden.
We told them family news, then left
to let them lie for another year.
That March the sun was thin as water.
Carpet green as Christmas wrapping
covered the brittle winter grass.
Hothouse flowers covered her coffin
balanced above the open grave.
The preacher droned his graveside words.
I squeezed my tears under my eyelids.
We left her in the March graveyard
waiting for May and an iris bouquet.
El Amor Pasa
Some rite should mark the death of love,
some moment lovers declare love dead,
with ceremony, then take their leave
of one another with ritual graces.
There should be words the parsons read
with solemn sorrow on their faces
in chapels filled with candle light.
We’ll have to stumble as best we can
through awkward meetings in public places.
We have no comforting parting rite.
Love died between us, I don’t know when.
Your love for me was first to go,
then, some time, mine for you was gone;
No ritual marked the when and how.
Flesh and Conceits
Elizabethan poets wrote their rhymes
to catalog their women’s charms
in strained conceits, or else the times
produced strange women, wigged with wire,
with jeweled lips and ivoried arms,
cold robots to set a man afire.
I prefer your flesh to take to bed
in all its humanity. Warm skin
beats ivory; jeweled kisses wear
the lips away. I like your head
with hair, not wires. Crescendoing
to spill my seed in your warm place
I glory in your hips’ wild swing
and the rush of blood that flushes your face.
Teddy’s Bath
Mother insisted Teddy was dirty
and must endure the washing machine.
I watched him through the glass in front.
He battled the tumbling currents bravely,
but his stitches broke and he lost his head.
His cotton drained with the soapy water.
His button eyes were left behind.
They rattled round the tub as it spun.
I wept over the rag he’d become.
“At least he’s clean,” my mother said.
“And dead,” I said. “I’ll fix him,” she promised,
“while you take your bath.” “No!” I screamed.
“I don’t want to lose my head
and send my innards down the drain!”
The Boy
“Where has he gone, the boy who clapped
his hands to the robin’s song and marveled
to see the squirrels rear, rigid,
to reconnoiter the park with fierce
black eyes before they buried their nuts?
That boy dreamed bright dreams and planned
great deeds. I wonder, did he ever
wander the woods with wolves his companions?
Did he dance with dappled dolphins
or run between the glittering stars?”
“He boxed his dreams in workday tissues
and put the boxes in his heart’s attic,
took up the world of everyday
and withered away among accountants.”
The Singing Boy
Angels might envy his boy’s soprano.
His “White Coral Bells” enraptured
an audience of parents and teachers,
his “O, Holy Night” beguiled them
to set their hearts on sacred things.
At six he tore my homework in pieces.
At seven he punched my stomach. At eight
he tried to drown me in the toilet.
At nine, he beat my head on the curb.
I fought back, then. The teacher caught us,
and punished me. She did not think
a demon child could sing like an angel.
At ten he moved, I hoped to Hell,
where he could never sing on key.
Ghosts Between Us
Ghosts walk between us in the lane,
hurts we’ve given one another.
We talk of familiar things we’ve done
hiding in ordinary matters,
denying truth, hoping it withers.
We wrap our hurts in shrouds of chatter.
We fear to say them would open doors
to mental rooms where clawed things wait
to tear our crafted selves to tatters.
How long will we fill our shared hours
with idle conversation that floats
like dandelions on the winds?
Will brittle patter let us forget?
Or free the ghosts that haunt our minds?
If I Should Die
If I should die before you wake
some morning, take what time you need
to know your grief before you look
for other folk to comfort you.
I would not go among the dead
without remembrance or have you go
among the living with untouched grief.
Be with me one last while as we
have been: one manifest in two.
Then go about your separate life
and let me be what the dead must be.
If your separateness needs salve,
then think of me as one set free
from the weary turbulence of self.
In Fifty Years
Fifty years from now will we
sit in our rocking chairs all day
waiting until we can rest and be
forgotten names on tombstones cut
with the chisel, or will we replay,
although more slowly, what we thought
and said and did when we were young?
I hope not, for then our time
will be short, and our ending ought
to be a death-defying song.
Let’s make a triumph, teasing rhyme
and reason from chaos. We’ll tell all
the gloomy wardens of that dark home
the dead inhabit, we’re living well.
Night Incident
Eastward, rain obscures the dawn.
Westward, the mountain hides the moon.
Barking dogs and slamming doors
have wakened us, to peer at the street
through red-lit raindrops on our windows.
We watch the crew roll out the gurney,
we speculate in quiet voices
what desperation rides its wheels,
which neighbor copulates with death.
Someone starts their car and follows
the ambulance around the corner.
Eastward, the dawn breaks through the rain.
Westward the sun has touched the mountain.
We wait for news in the morning paper.
Night Music
It’s three in the morning; I’m alone in my bed,
wakened from dreams I refuse to remember.
The sweat of my fear soaks my sheets.
I turn the radio on for distraction.
Steel guitars cry the blues, laments
dry as grief, and hot as hate.
They waken black things deep in me.
Something struggles to live in the hollows
between midnight and dawn, fights
to birth itself inside me and crawl
into the day to blacken it.
I thrust the monstrous fetus back,
change the station in mid-chord,
and wait for day with piano jazz.
Spring Breakfast
In spring I breakfast with mourning doves.
I remember their song from my childhood mornings.
I wake un-rested from broken sleep.
My knees remind me I’m growing old.
Something grates in my elbows as well.
My tea is bitter, my toast is tasteless.
Sugar and butter sour my digestion.
My eyes blear in the morning breeze
that scatters iris petals on the deck.
I force my fingers around my cup.
The tea is hot and comforts them.
I listen as doves grieve this morning.
I chew my toast and sip at my tea.
I’m glad my ears and teeth still work.
Spring Vistas
In April the world starts over again.
Calla lilies bloom in the gardens,
and rosebuds unfold in silver vases.
Ladies in lace and watered silk
drink jasmine tea from porcelain cups
and pass platters of lady fingers
with polite remarks about the weather.
Weeds thrust up from sidewalk cracks
and gnats dance over abandoned tires.
Boys in jeans and baggy shirts
drink yellow beer from shiny cans
and pass corn chips in plastic bags
with lewd remarks about their women.
In April, the world renews itself.
Summer Grass
Summer grass was brown that day
we marked the lambs and sheared the ewes.
I put aside my