Poetry

Which face to choose?
Start in the left-hand corner—and speak to it
      as if to a flock of birds

Under the streetlamp
cars glistened end
to end clogging the cul
de sac and driveway

I swim in his beard diving deep my breath giving out quickly in spite of all I know to do, all that he has taught me, my Merlin, he has schooled me in the things of the pot—the dragon’s blood and the mistletoe and the black willow—he has...

Why did it fascinate me so much,
that ditch my father had dug
in the front lawn to fix
a faulty pipe? I couldn’t keep

Wheat, mostly, to David Davies,
flax to the Owens, every month
a careful list of profit

He is in the open laying something softer down.
Leaves as tokens weigh the ground
And twigs as sextants pull the low sun.

Glancing out from our corner table
across the assisted living facility’s
cafeteria, my mother-in-law
Shirley says, “Why, there are no men here!”

So little darkness in the darkness here.
Each leaf a mirror of moonlight, incomparable.
The Japanese maple spooncupped in gold