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The Field Wants Its Sheep Back
Of course that’s me talking, but why wouldn’t
it want a tickle of hooves, a warming of shit,
less empty? Sheep with their panoramic vision
are stressed by isolation, and sometimes
given mirrors, which comfort. Alone
can be expansive—balm or terror. Cold
is plural, swoop-seeps into the crowd
of everything else that is. (The Victorians
spent fully half their time trying to get
warm. Nowadays, only the poor, the jailed.)
Granted the lux of hearth or heat, frigid
is simply a slap, a tightening, survivable.
Cold is no shroud, but a reawakening,
the way the death of a friend of a friend
enlivens after it saddens. Come no closer,
says my every soggy cell. Cost costs.
Still-greenish tufts offer themselves up
all the way to the treeline. Despite
summer’s sheep, they slowly whiten.
Let me spend wisely what I have,
which is only my breath—thin, visible
body heat. I am but a small animal.
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Thin Ice
Reedy striations don’t occlude the beneath—
earthy mash of leaves, flat pepper flakes, layered,
tips protruding, tender-desolate above a mirror
surface, gently pressing on horse-mane, nest material,
tickle-brush, fringe. Buff block-shapes further down,
ghost-bits of green-green, a lone leaf burned white.
My thrown stone skitters on ice. The next, larger,
plunks through, and for a moment I am a violator
but then I see that it opened a bubble cell, a city,
a lesion, a map—the way in cold and luminous.
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Choices We Live With
Surf blooms out of breaking water, ragged rows
of dangerous blossoms. I’m inside a wave looking
for up—and out of nowhere your face beside me.
Pounding, spiraling, I am smiling, needles of water
up my nose a sure sign I am alive, and you a distraction
still. I give you up for kelp, a tricky handhold. Flat,
and slick, it gives way. Tumbled by another curl,
I scrape bottom, then cork toward light. Later,
on the beach, skinned places sting like new
loss. Without your hands, my chest rises and falls.
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Not a Thing
I haven’t been known to address the Lord expletives
Day by night it’s a human wow I’m after the shiver-spank
of a Zulu choir suddenly in my car
ceremony that can’t be summarized
When night and day touch they are neither one
Lacking an addressee I do not lack wishes
May M.’s rogue cells in Rhode Island
How about less bereft all around
but bereft beautiful word is off-limits
my having been there so seldom
usually nothing but me-me-me in my way
while for decades R. has been moving his and others’ kites
and trains around with his dark mind
Ditto many wondrous others
heavily laden who still find the right
Bless the quiet that can’t be stilled Grant us
if not completion at least open eyes
Grant Y.’s liver the golden thread its weaving
Give us glimpses whiffs of gone lives and order
the good kind blooming in hot spots Let
my windows clap softly open
I’m stuck on how foodie and foodless
And how long will oil matter more than water
And how fast will plaque grow into which
Relentless week-long rain
while elsewhere walls and walls of it
Must I decide to be alone not to be
For I haven’t yet learned to address the sky
and the verb to fathom may never happen
but maybe a lightbulb is not what we need
For we are all and each on a train
