Poetry

I am not yet dead. Do not call this miracle or raise your hands in praise. First, 
you should know how long I prayed, and how I came to know the silence of the Lord.

They put their guns in the only boxes
that they had, and those the well-
liquored strips of gin barrels 

I went back to the city
we visited, to
the restaurant that

No one picked in the fields on Election Day. 
The trucks drove us to a picnic on the Bluff. 
The children sang songs like it was Sunday. 

Every April we unsheathed sofa cushions from their glassy wrappers,
perched tea on our laps, and became an audience for his four-decade

Gathered in the yard, shed-side, pokeweed, 
black walnut, pecan tree all leafed and 
umbrellaing. My grandmother, the relatives

When the ache was just too much, I’d skip
down the hill to the slip where you
and a small boat were always waiting.

I loved you, New York.

The way, at first, Tina loved Ike, loved even the winged
Effort of his anger, loved his punch-drunk backhand in flight,

Oh, obstreperous one, ornery outside of ordinary
protocols; paramilitary probie par 

excellence: Every evidence
you yield yells. 

In the stillness of a windless day,
trees stand full, and proud, and straight.