may
May 21, 2011 § Leave a comment
going through the house opening windows —
one still locked from winter
[a letter]
April 19, 2011 § Leave a comment
Midnight —
I post myself like a letter to the next day
but with no signature
[yard trees]
March 27, 2011 § Leave a comment
Greener now than they used to be:
The yard trees now that the house has gone.
[chicory]
March 19, 2011 § 4 Comments
Image via Wikipedia
if the chicory is on the road
so am I
traveling so far that the wild carrots become
Queen Anne’s Lace
Nightcrawlers pray for America
March 19, 2011 § Leave a comment
In the dark of noon
a roadside bait shop sign
glows at us
NIGHTCRAWLERS PRAY FOR AMERICA
Even the animals of the earth,
who live so deep
they only know of our weather
when the rain carries it down to them,
pray for us
as towers fall
like candles through the air
First House
March 19, 2011 § Leave a comment
Image by urtica via Flickr
slowly the leafy green stem round budlike flower I thought
to choose to build under the shade of it
in the cup of branches
the house safe fort
all by myself and the kitchen door
alone on its twig in the holly shade
to build
I get a blanket
I get a cup
I get a dish and a book and away
the white budding popping here and there
waking up after my day
to find my house had changed itself
along in its flesh and deep wherever it was
and I stood
and I knelt
and I looked
it was the cackling crisp wasp worm
pasted with eggs
and arched
and reared
and waved
at me
and screamed and one of us screamed
guns on Sunday
March 3, 2011 § Leave a comment
Six rifles, six shotguns: I grew up with them. They remained unremembered until a year ago when the pond by the house was drained. The bottom of the pond was lined with a couple of inches of lead shot.
Six rifles and six shotguns in the den, not far from the TV and the fireplace. Their stocks were of the same wood that lined the walls and the floor. All the wood shined.
I touched one once, proving to my father at thirteen that I would never be able to shoot skeet one winter Sunday at the skeet range that he and my uncle had built around the pond. The clay pigeons whizzed past faster than I could aim the gun and I emptied two shells’ worth of shot in the direction of the water. The rest of my Sundays were spent inside.
The house is gone and the pond drained, the layer of lead shot and a few empty shotgun shells there for everyone to see, And now it has been a year, and the lead shot hauled away and contained. And now I remember the Sundays and the guns and my father who has been gone one more year.
a night kitchen 