For the heron that rousts the swamp, thank you. And for spiders shocked into gradual sleep.
I am not old but old enough to believe I know what Jimmy Stevens wants when he invites my sister into his Model-A. And because
Business never slows for the air’s ubiquitous morticians, their spiraling so effortless we might admit its beauty, if we didn’t know how eagerly, in those ridiculous black boas,
The stones are grown over with moss, canker-eaten, illegible even to the sun
You don’t know the forest of two minds bound by weeds grown from one to the other,
Life’s on the wire; The rest is waiting. I know I’m alive when I
Dawn boils up like milk, cloudy with disrespect. Like Tin Pan Alley hacks, paid for each line, neighborhood wrens bang out their high-pitched notes.
Winter at the end of the trail, where the Columbia washes the ocean, what one book calls The Kingdom of Conifers,
This pain is so familiar (we were all children once) I let it ride my back. I offer it in,
