poem a today

OF THE FARM

Clouds ambling in the sky above my father,
whose back, dark with sweat, hovers over
the field like a period, far from the road where
my mother and I, kicking up slow, lazy dust
clouds of our own, drive back from church.

The sun on my face is a baptism, the mint melting
to nothing in my mouth, a communion.
The mechanical cacophony of the riding mower,
only a hum in the distance: some hymn
whose words have been long forgotten.

poem a sometimes

WALKING IN WINTER

The clouds all swollen with snow
and leaf-smoke in the air,

Firelight through the trees
like candles in a vigil,

The darkness covering us gone
heavy with things unsaid,

But each breath hovers, drifts,
like some minor cloud, and

There is no sound so rich
as your voice saying my name.

A MEETING

I have, of course, gone over it all before:

not the time of day or the place, even, but

the movement toward each other, and

the general shape of my hair, the positioning

of my arms, out (I suppose) or on their way out.

I do not dare pose you. So, in the going-overs, you

are the unmapped continent, the endpoint, my

destination. And your voice says my only my name,

endlessly.

And if I could take back my lie, I would say

that the time of day is during the cool sigh of morning,

the last week of summer, and the place is unfamiliar

to both of us, but chosen. Or, perhaps, in twilight,

by half-chance, at autumn's easy peak.

You saying my name and me saying yours,

tumbling together, tired (always, we are tired),

concerned then less about the where and the when;

the who, in every instance, is answered:

you, you, you.

Oh, the sudden hollow silence--
no electricity. The white-noise of the fans
gone. The lights gone dark and gone. I
awoke in a playhouse, where all things,
upon inspection fail: taking up space, they
do not perform. Useless,

I moved between the walls of this place,
half-drunk with sleep; flipping fuses with
dumb faith, I was shocked
each time that the lights, the fridge, the stove,
did not obey my tiny, clicking command.

Two hours later and with a beep the walls
are shorn up again, my net of electricity
gratefully restored.

poem an occasionally

poem under revision

oops, nevermind. it didn't work.

morbid poem a day

SUNBURNS

Seven years, they say it takes,
for every cell in the body to be replaced.
I've often thought about the path it takes--
does it start on my feet, my fingers, my face?

Or is it more like tossing one hundred rocks
in one hundred lakes: the ripples working the locks,
laying another layer of sediment in all those rocks,
my face just the current face of my body's many clocks?

And when, sun-burned, dried and dead,
my arms, my neck, my face are shed,
could the ring of window-white around the red
tell me anything but one day you'll be dead?