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| Fox Island/ Conway Bird Sanctuary Wheeling hawks above, Their barred feathers fanning upper air currents, The splash of an unknown animal Leaping from the brushy shore, These sights and sounds remain Textures sewn into my shirt sleeves, My eye scours the marshy farmland, Devouring the sighting of another raptor And tantruming for more: Surely within this inch of watery grass There lives a snake or a frog, Surely life would not deign to continue Only emerging song-first From within blackberry tangles Or even further, the dark outlines Of herons trolling by drift wood clumps. My hand arcs as I brush. The fingers curl And the hair lies flat This facing of self before the mirror A preservation And a crumb drifted One more meal to be savored Within the sphere of light Eddied; Morning shadows recede My gaze the journey Between mimicking the now And that lingering past. That adolescent refusal That staying beyond the border Of naming your claim as father Stymied you and fed The feral in me And now that death by inhalation Has grabbed us And dumped its gravel I wonder whether I should Remain without the gate Or step inside. |
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| LOONS IN THE NIGHT I hear an explosive yodel Loons in the night: Your demise at forty-three The wail of guitars twanged Within bad ballads. Your face falling onto the truck seat Marks me, A dog tag tatooed around my neck Bled scarlet and twilight blue souvenir of a smoldering family feud |
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| SUMMER GIRL You are a summer girl and I, A winter girl: First and last, We two might have plaited daisy chains, Now that I am middle aged; My mind will not remember though My January soul lingers in meadows sweet, Perhaps waiting for my summer sister To take me to cool watered shade and laughter. |