Writing

The Next Time We Meet

I’ll stand in the crossroads
you make
when you enter a room.
Clouds will bluster overhead
like men who have seen
too much water.
All the wrong moments of our lives
will pour down.

You will not smile or kiss:
but say you’ve been courting
persimmons,
your tongue’s away on vacation;
you’ll toss me hellos
and other empty packages
to open in the unwrapped night.

Please be fair. I am trying
every magic:
I’ll dance if you’re thirsty;
pray if you need food;
I will untie my shoelaces
if you’re about to give birth.

   Appeared in Indiana Writes

Mountain Stream

To be a stream is to find
sun, leaves, bluefish,
footprints inside you;
the colors loosed
when an otter swims,
oak roots aching to travel.
A stream is the celebration
of rain, ceremony to keep
the mountain whole.

To be a stream is to serenade
the early air,
float woodlarks’ songs
where they want to go.
Lakes would climb
up mountains if they could,
be the stream itself,
feel the sky nudge
like a deer come to drink.

Mother, you’ve become
the mountain, giving rushing water
its font, and its pathway
through the world.

To think of you is to shine
like the stream and know why
it shines, to know why
I am never alone on the mountain.

 —Appeared in Indiana Writes. 

These Birds

You do not like these birds. They fly
like all the others. Barn, ground, trees
accept their touch, only to give it up
as birds take flight,
tossed up like seed for the gods,
to grow clouds or sunlight—
wings brushing sky we cannot reach or see.

I say, my dear husband-to-be,
celebrate birds: seeds free
of earth’s erratic sleep, seeds
not bound to soil and water only..
Trust the sky, where a cardinal blooms
in its blue, where she separates
from her mate, breaking gravity’s restraints.

I would not rescue
the red pulse revealed beneath her wings,
reaching the single larger body,
nor would I rescue any sky
carelessly blue alive in these birds.

   Appeared in Indiana Writes. All poems taken from a collection entitled This Planet Neighborhood

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