Month: April 2016

Her face shifts, soft in afternoon sun.

She turns her gaze to me.

Traffic stills; the street hushes.

She kept crackers bedside,

magazines next to the dog,

eyes on the television

nose to the gossip pages.

 

I used to lie on the pillow

and smell the dog smelling.

 

The dog is all alone now.

 

 

He was once the exploiter

of those who exploited,

found no reason not to reach over the horizon,

see what the world held for him.

 

But in age, fear grew, clung to him

until he ceased to bring food to his mouth,

and brought his mouth to food.

 

Photos of firefighter, paratrooper, father

who made his children climb mountains,

build fires, walk deserts.

He thunders across the floor,

the end of an era.

 

All day, a button push, a key stroke,

a message away from implosion,

stultification like ossification,

like petrification,

 

like sitting in a small, hot room

with the window stuck closed,

and the door locked, from the outside;

like being in the maw of the beast.

 

Through grape-heavy trellis

we watched a city effervesce

on the river like dreaming.

We ran barefoot over smooth,

cool cobble stones,

drank wine in the sun.

 

The vines bloomed, hung with fruit,

were harvested, then pruned and tied.

Waiting for a new season,

the vineyard stood empty.

Snow covered steep paths and rows

above the city and the river.

 

Now, the cathedral bell tolls at midnight,

echoes through mist on quiet streets.

The stream flows beneath ice

by the old mill as if you never left,

and years hadn’t passed between us.

 

 

Ice cold, motionless, silent,

profiles silver and gray—

 

A ball on the grass,

The grill on the deck,

Chairs in the yard,

Vines, leafless, fence tangled.

 

The ringing of ice cream truck bells,

robins trilling in dawn, calls of children

hang in the air, crystalline, waiting thaw.

Squares of moon across bare plank;

dust the color of ghosts.

Windows webbed and spiked like teeth.

Snow drifted in the hearth.

 

In a breath, dust lifts and swirls

through the room like mist.

In the stillness,

a child rasps and heaves.

 

I rub my hands against the cold,

feel from memory and from genes,

the calluses, the deep joint pain,

the odor of frozen, plowed earth.

 

Outside, coyotes gather

in the snow, baying

at the moon.

Like leaves, those who can’t find home

scatter. Mangy dogs crane necks,

sniff for the dank smell of shelter.

 

Twilight falls on my porch swing

and into my coffee cup,

flutters up again with the steam,

orange against the night.

 

winter

 

under this stand of pine

cold folds into dark and quiet

 

snowmelt makes a stream

through the still heart

 

spring

 

a riot of leopard frogs

wakes in cattails,

boars snuffle

through moldering needles

 

mists roll off my coat

into my shoes

 

summer

 

sunlight flecks the plantation floor

bluebirds dart between boughs

and pull caterpillars from cones

 

cool air settles on skin

 

fall

 

a lone woodpecker trill

floats in the woods,

a prayer before sleeping

 

 

In a spray of tin plates, twisted forks,

empty cans and bits of rusted metal,

chimneys stand alone, skeletons

that grape and creeper hold aloft.

 

Mortarless stones, kettle handles,

iron bands from barrels

tumble toward the brook.

 

Children scream and shout there;

Union soldiers, too, drawn up into tree trunks—

roots grown through them—

alive again in asters and bees’ wings.