Geese at Midnight
as if honking the light back thru the pine’s lashes like women floating barefoot into fields starved for some moon, their white wings on blue wood, a rustle in wetness. This was not a dream thought it held me as close, a brightness coming back as sound
Read MoreOn the Afternoon the Geese Come
you can smell ice breaking up, scene of watercress uncurling. Only a few months from the longest dark day, willows fling blond tentacles. Wet clay smells sweeter. In blackness past the metro last night, a fingernail moon. Some say it smells wilder than a full moon, that herons listening for fish under the pond’s crust can smell dreams of anything moving
Read MoreNow Let’s Say
you are out in the suburbs in your little gated rooms and you’re not even desperate. Let’s say you’re not so young you could leave whatever seemed safe for a fling, losing it all. Then the red shoes mania gets to you. Could be a love, ballet, it could even be a horse you fall wild for, decide you want your ashes scattered over her grave. In your head maybe you’re Moira Shearer, flame red hair the whitest skin, mystery skin. Maybe the red shoes are the color of what makes you lie, something you give up everything else for, let what matters collide, tear you to shreds. Are you going to...
Read MoreLate November (II)
Today in Virginia, unseasonably cold, high only in the mid 30’s. I think of a night drive from Austerlitz an hour north to bring in my plants, early September. The sky tangerine, guava and teal. My own house strangely quiet, my cat at my mother’s. When I think of a night I drove from Austerlitz to bring in the plants, my mother young enough to swoop up suitcases, my cat, I was looking for someone. “Aren’t you glad you still have me?” my mother purred. The cat I got after that one, now going on 21, the ice yesterday a...
Read MoreLate November (I)
one minute, the sun was out, it was fall. Geraniums under a quilt last night, a blotch of red opening. On the front step what looked like lint has small pink claws and feet. Next the sky was the color of lead. Geraniums under a quilt last night like a child you’ve tucked in or a body wrapped in the earth under leaves. In the swirl of sudden snow, what was left of the headless fur blows west Like a child you’ve tucked in whatever was living, a just born squirrel I suppose, hardly a living thing except for feet. In fifteen...
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