Four days out of the oven

She made this pie.

 

She peeled apples, shelled walnuts, diced a pear,

placed them in a butter-flake shell

and sprinkled it all with sugar and cinnamon.

 

Her knife sits on a clean towel, juice dried on the blade.

Flour coats bowls, pans, measuring cups in the sink.

The counter’s slick with butter.

 

Woven lattice crust shows the refinement

of her craft, hides her ideas and frustrations.

Intention vanished with the thinker.

 

Around the living room, mourners fork

through the edge where she thumbed the dough

between two fingers held slightly apart.

salt

snowy night 1under burden of snow

the city grows quiet

 

human beings at work

the only movement tonight

 

shovel scrape, crunch,

tires sing on slick pavement

 

breaths hang in streetlight

mumbles, moans, and sighs

 

snow ends the business

of salvagers and gleaners

 

they join their fellows, shuffling

citizens who have little to do

 

but sprinkle their labors with salt

and inhale the night

sacrifice

A wooden porch swing on an old house on Wells Street in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

a raindrop on humus

drips down through fossils

on a cave roof

 

it joins others in a river

that flows out of a rock seam,

pure, clear, cold

 

the twelve year old cups his hands

and drinks in the sweetest memory

he’ll ever taste

 

the old man sits in the porchswing

and daydreams

alone no more

ravensmidday heat conjures miasmas

from the victim who smiles skyward,

rictus cocked, drooling on the yellow stripe,

empty eyes looking different directions,

 

 

in tire tread

there is being, demise, vivacity, mortality;

sons daughters mothers fathers

friends acquaintances self—

mounds of earth, urns, carved stones—

damnation, salvation, ruination, redemption

 

the rearview mirror frames a procession,

attendants in black strut over their treasures,

pick tufts of fur from pavement.