My reason for laying beside you and smelling like beer When you finish reading this I want you to be able to paint The sky I saw when I walked out To the garbage bin at dusk. Look up past the spring buds Blurring the kinky ends of the ginko To the ribbon of sky, upended by […]
Two trees I studied the topographical map once To find out the secret of the two big trees In the lower yard. They were the permanent Things about that piece of land our house Had stood on for more than one hundred years. The two acres peaked at 480 feet above sea level And dipped in […]
D’s Communion One time when I was a young man I caught the scent of the priest Through the tannins of the communion wine. He smelled like my father On the morning that he buried my mother. I had just married. My new wife Kept two paces behind me In the communion line. Taking the host was […]
My son at 6 at the end of the weekend Your arm drapes along my whole side From my shoulder to my hip to my ankle Where your finger circles the knob Of my joint firmly. I can feel the warm press Of your palm, the weight of your elbow Against the worn fleece of […]
Early Winter Morning When I am ready to bury you I want the weather to cooperate. That would be a sign of god’s grace. I don’t want to be standing by the open grave In a driving rain, The umbrella fluttering querulously overhead; Or staring at the crystals of a deep frost Bound to the irregular […]
A’s Communion Through him With him In him In the unity of the holy spirit Unto the hour of death, And the echo of a long valley For ever and ever. Crepe paper lightens my hand The flutter comes from the breath Of the word One supplication in this prayer To feel him A postcard From a […]
T’s communion When I go to communion hold my hand. The change in the air, The rustle of the heavy clothes, The scuff of shoes against the polished slate, The solitary cough, The clap of the wood boards against metal stays, The mumuring up ahead, The swollen rotation of the bellows, The stillness of the lift, […]
The impulse in song What wants to sing, to thresh the air with sound and watch the chaff rise, lift, grab, elevate, erupt Into a line of song that makes me want to swing my legs to and fro, snap my fingers like this? The ball of my foot pushes on the wood floor so I can see […]