One merganser follows another on an oblique liquid path
as rain sprinkles the inlet with tiny circles

Gliding behind, to the side, following casually and comfortably
She is charcoal gray and wears a cap of even darker red
White and black, he leads

Their bond certain as the lake

She tousles her head, spraying an explosion of droplets into the air

.

If I were to glide so gracefully with you my love

Viscous continuity, instinct

Undaunted by any rain

We could live forever

without need

or even a single

word

I​n the Adirondack High Peaks
There is a lean-to weighted heavily with winter’s snow
The open side gapes like the mouth of a burrow at dawn
On a wooded slope populated by perfectly still silver trees

Four human animals, fragrant and coarse, hibernate within
Held in brightly colored down bags
Their slumbering breaths play a soothing cadence
To the man who has awakened, propped against the back wall
Still bundled and hooded in a warm cocoon

W​ith half-shut eyes, looking out
All the great world is Out There
Within, for a moment, the temporary state of his mortal residence
Clarifies
Like vapor nucleating into ice
Around a mote of dust

S​oon, however, very soon, the false gods perched hungrily on his shoulders
Peck at the fragile peace
Dismantling it and casting it into a stream of minor thoughts

P​ast his toes, out of the opening of the den
White diamonds swirl and fall continuously
Silently, onto humble white ground
It is so beautiful, so perfect, the gods stop their pecking
And eventually even the man turns
Away from his tedious contemplating
To take notice

I​t arrived quietly

O​n the same tongue that wove two lives together

A sunlit April in DC tewnty years ago

e e cummings from the heart, eyes closed, in a bus shelter

holding both my hands

T​he Divorce went through, she said, coming down the path

Now unwed, we embraced

O​utside the yellow house where she gave birth

O​ur daughter walking past us

To somewhere we have not yet traveled

T​rain whistle
tons of rolling steel
cutting off
my path to you
As I wait
Iconic willows
allow themselves
to be gently tossed
by the wind
They make it look
like dance
as easy as an
oft-repeated practice
free with the forces
that appear in their lives
The train’s rumble
has left my chest
clearing the way

A flourish of bittersweet cascades over the top of the garden fence
and rises, stretching its tendrils skyward
bright orange and red
berries, the brightest colors in the world
of brown frozen trees and homogeneous gray sheets of altostratus clouds

The fence’s wood has been worn by the rain, snow and sun of a decade
He remembers stretching the galvanized wire with a crowbar
pressing the tool with his shoulder to keep tensile pressure on the taut strands
holding a staple carefully in place between his fingers, hammering it home
A headlamp lighting his movements, breath curling in the beam
the project lasting into chilly nights

She’d prepared lunches, dinners, fed and played with the kids
while he’d worked, taken care of the whole family
They came outside to admire his progress, their young curious eyes
building unknown memories
and filed past him into the woods to collect acorns and snake tongues
throw sticks into the creek and watch them float away

The kids are at their mom’s apartment this weekend
The yard and garden are as quiet as the empty woods
A tree fort that he built overlooks it all
holding onto the thick trunk of a gnarled black walnut
the way memories cling in the heart

The garden endures winter under a blanket of withered grass
Hollow husks of tomato plants stand in their cages
like odd configurations of bones
Dry sage, aromatic to the touch, clings aloft to lifeless stalks
a last vestige of harvest

Beneath hay, garlic is waiting out the cold
and reaching from the soil with twisted fingers
Each spring when he pulls the covering back he never ceases to be amazed
at the bright green leaves that somehow grown in darkness

On a Distant Coast

Believing this time would be the last
as I had believed each time I entered your room
since getting the call
pulling children from school
rushing from one plane to another, to your bedside
I find your half-closed, near vacant eyes
of yesterday gone

replaced with ones wide open and staring straight
transfixed
looking through me as though I do not stand
in body and breath
between you and what captivates
your blue eyes, alight with fear or wonder

eyes that had cried when a bee stung your hand
and it swelled to the size of an orange
a half onion pressed to the skin
that had set me free, so many times
when I left to Guatemala, and that failed attempt
to hitch-hike across the country
I’ve been letting you go since you were a little boy, you’d said

Now you are the one drawn to a distant coast
and I’m letting you go
Your eyes holding something only you can see, as though to look away
would be to drop the world like a glass egg
and lose a chance forever

Do you see them coming
the angels you believed would be there
the one you praised and sang to
playing the piano before church
morning light shining on your freshly washed hair
as the rest of us bustled to get ready

Were they true, the stories
I cast away, breaking your heart

As I put water in your mouth and on your lips with a sponge
have you found life’s most precient moment

Spring Sadhana

C​oals breathe brighter shades of red

a​nd orange as wind gusts through camp

chilling the back of my neck

a​nnouncing a new mood, a new spirit in the

w​oods, playing through bare trees

making music in swaying branches

c​resting and crashing with

t​hose striving fingers reaching ever

h​igher, bare but

n​ot budless

h​idden treasure held aloft

A​ spider rushes over the page, so small yet

bold and purposeful, toward

m​y pen

D​oes it have a line to add?

O​ver the edge it goes, onto

m​y lap, then finger, I

​deposit it onto the lean-to floor

w​here it quickly disappears into

a​ crack between the boards

u​nthwarted in its mission to

h​unt and kill

i​nsects

T​o be such

S​ingular vision, bold execution

N​o patient waiting or casting about

o​f gossamer threads

A​ moment of jealousy

f​or a life of deliberate action

A voice I have never heard startles

the air not far away, chaotic, animal

b​ird-like, shouting a warning

f​ighting another, or being killed

silent

crackling fire, rush of wind

D​rops of rain sizzle as they land on

g​lowing coals

Into the Lake

Reflections jest at my eyes
Millions of points of light play like free electrons zinging ecstatic through space
Hazy, green hills, and majestic white clouds speak the words forever and ever, Amen
I am too small to behold it, a soft, warm spot here on the rocky shore,
An infrared smudge tarrying on bedrock cleaved by the icy hands of glaciers

Diverting my eyes, beneath the water stones wear slippery, fuzzy green coats
Gathered like sheep in a huddle
Stepping in, my feet become lost beneath the surface, detached
So then my knees, thighs, the chill shocking and removing my sex
My belly, where once there was smooth skin
Now covered in tendrils of algae, slips beneath and away

M​y head is a periscope, my body the machine
Disintegrating, overrun with fish and zebra muscles
Its treasure falls down between the widening cracks
Currents disassemble the walls of my bones

T​he wind in my ears has come for miles to deliver this one message
Over the surface of the water, gliding deftly on each ripple, tousling my hair
Dissolve. Return