from “How Not to Break”

“…This is how everything

changes. It appears perched on the edge of a cliff, 

ready to fall and smash to bits. Maybe it does

fall. Maybe it does smash to bits. But then suddenly it is

made out of birds, and you never knew how much flight

was hiding in your veins all this time…”

[Human Error Publishing, 2017]

Make it Shine, or Uncle J in Hospice

On the table beside his spotted hand

I lay down a knotted red Montana 

rock. Sorry for all the years I never — 

He says. Stops. Then, I keep you in my prayers.

He is in mine too, two different powers — 

The living. The dying. All of us. His eyes wander

other worlds. Hawk, my guide the Red Tail, 

brought me a message at the hospital,

he continues, feather shine! Flew right down

to the windowsill. Then he’s gone 

again, spirit treading the path he’ll soon

take for good

away from body cells laced with cancer,

Agent Orange remnants, the commander’s

trauma response. Aunt Jules holds back tears, strains

to laugh as he tried to joke through addled brain.

In my chest — the grief, another stone to take, 

to carry in the rattle of my heart. To shake

and shake, until the weight turns to light. 

[Toe Good Poetry, 2013]

October Vows

While we were busy this week, making last minute preparations

for the wedding, the Great Barrier Reef was pronounced dead.

The marine biologists saw it coming. We didn’t listen — 

we had to keep driving to work, to the doctor, home.

When my brother was fourteen I left home. He was in trouble,

and we all knew it. Empty bottles, spate of arrests. Nothing

we could do. It went like that for years, until the phone call

from a girl who, it turned out, he would clean up to marry. 

In New England the ocean looks the same. I could almost

believe nothing of gravity has happened. Leaves are falling; 

I went outside earlier with the kids to try and catch them in our

hands. The forest floor smells golden — a kind of genteel mustiness. 

Later: we fly. Below us as we wing west to the other coast, a

sparkle of scarlets, mauves, vermilion. We are used to this out 

east, as if it is possible to be accustomed to miracles. As if some

things are a given: that water temperatures will continue to rise

until we change, that some colors slip through our hands,

that we are wed to our planet for better or for worse, that life

itself is cause to celebrate, that in love

there is still, always, hope. 

[Silkworm Journal, 2016]

Some Reflection

White coreopsis of light splashed across skin —

some reflection that strayed from the window,

tumbled to your chest. We breathed vertigo

as we tilted our bodies and tore down our limbs

like walls, until the foundations were all

that remained. We crawled inside, shuffled around,

filthy and beautiful. Two sets of brown

quasi-conscious eyes locked, for a moment — still. 

Pushing back the sheets, we listened: clock

and silence kissed our thoughts. Ambivalence:

unspoken questions answered by Tick. Tock. 

The quiet remained, a barbed wire question

between us. Searching for those pale petals,

I found the sun had set by the time you left. 

[FHP, 2015]

Soil, Seed, Roots, Rain, Sun, Growth

Beginnings are myths, histories we invent to keep the ground beneath our feet in a world where all the stories twist together in an ever-changing tightrope on which we must balance. These sentences are as real as a horizon, and as complicated. What I wish to express with them, though, is a simple desire: to sit across the table from you, tea in hand, and to make eye contact. To breathe in & out in your presence. Nothing more. Or perhaps there is more. I’d ask you to tell me a story, something about you: a warm memory, a favorite color, the last book you read and what you thought of it. Anything I don’t know (and there is so much I don’t know). It’s raining as I write this, and I’m sitting on a sun porch, listening to the water. I’ve moved again recently, in the midst of these April showers. I watch the new buds just beginning to shout “green!” in the garden. Soil, seed, roots, rain, sun, growth: isn’t that the story of us all? The same bird has been waking me up every morning for two weeks by knocking into the window just above my bed. My room is in a basement and I had planned on burrowing into it, never expecting such a guest. What I desire is simple (as if desire is ever simple), though I have to find you before it can happen. I’d like to ask you about your story, which is a way of loving you. Love is a robin in springtime flying into its own reflection in a plate glass window. It can be kept out. Or let in. Will you let me in? Here, sit down, have a cup of your favorite tea. Here, now. Will you tell me your story? 

[FHP, 2015]