Before water was water it grieved
Before water was water it grieved word by word the way each woman caresses her first child though what you hear is its mist washing over those breasts as moonlight and riverbanks no longer struggling — by instinct your lips will claim the Earth with the kiss that gives each birth its scent and between your arms clings with just its bones — with each kiss you drink then weep and the dirt already rain helps you remember nothing else between your thirst and...
Read MoreCat and Child
It rained the entire time we dug the little ditch. Rained pretty hard. But we had already waited hours for it to stop, and the cat wrapped in a towel in the garage could not wait. My daughter, not much bigger at the time than the doll she cradled in her arms, escorted me outside, as if the precious moments from back door, to backyard were more valuable to her than any gold we might one day discover, or any dreams we might fulfill. Thirteen. Pumpkin lived to an unlucky number, I realized, as mud stuck to the bottoms of our shoes like suction cups. I lightly pushed the shovel into the mud with...
Read MoreDrifting
things I have and don’t have come from this moving between people like smoke. I’ve been waiting the way milkweed I brought inside two years ago stays suspended, hair in the wind it seems to float, even its black seeds don’t pull it down tho you don’t under stand how any thing could stay that way so long
Read MoreThese Sons
deep waves rise and fall as they breathe they hear winds lift spume from salt know the cry of terns lifting the horizon and yet and yet they walk the shore pick sea shells run rope through hands yearn for tiller and rise of tide
Read MoreTurnout
The sweet aroma of horse and hay in half-light: barn cat spats, the clatter and scraping of rakes mucking stalls, scoops coming from the grain bin water hoses snaking up and down the barn aisle. This is a discipline for health, a way to keep daily practice of fresh air, sunshine, and amble. It starts with the murmur of walk-on, permission to pass through stall doors swung wide, hooves clop-clopping along cement then stepping out quickening pace through the gravel barnyard. Up the hill, beyond hot electric fence, free from halters they kick heels, thrilled to frisk and run together or deftly,...
Read MoreLearning to Mourn
Dirty fingers part the nylon nest and search for life, stroke a pair of minute spines, checking the damp, unfeathered skin for signs of breathing. The jays lie lumped together, pink and raw, wet dog food wedged in their beaks. This time last year my son waded in the bay with a busload of first graders, gathering crab casings, gooey fish and bright shells in buckets, all floating and splashing in the sun, while we parents stood knee-deep and absentmindedly watched the shallows for submerged heads and floundering limbs, aware of the forces that drag children under, that led two classmates to a...
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