How sparkling the snow
 This morning!
         (Her hair mats with sweat,
          Not brushed away)
 It drifts across the 
 Sidewalks, so pure, so
 Soft, so cold.
         (She is sixteen)
 The wind must have 
 Swirled here, in this
 Bare spot between buildings,
 As it always does.
         (The sound of her
          Respirator is of cars
          Skidding, over and over).
 Bedside radios talk
 To squares of light
 Falling on her bed
 In shapes of windows.
  
  
  
 In: Group Practice Journal ©1987 American Medical Group Association (AMGA). 

 The eagle calls, circling, 
 Shrill, to its family.
  
 The raven croaks, gliding, 
 Guttural, to its friend.
  
 I text anyone 
 Receiving my signal:
  
 I’m done here,
 I’m going on. 
  
 Just want you 
 To know. 
  
   

 They are gold, orange, red, 
 Amid the gray and black of 
 Tree trunks settling into 
 Imperceptibly rising ground 
 Left by glaciers. 
  
 We become part of 
 An elegant detritus, 
 Sweeping up with thin rakes
 This year’s contribution to 
 Eternity. 

 Just tying up loose ends, he said, 
 Visiting relatives 
 We haven’t seen in thirty years;
 Changing the oil, washing windows, 
 Updating passwords,
 Trying to leave the place 
 Better than we found it.
 A hopeless task, really. 
 Even so, it feels better 
 To have 
 Drained the pipes, 
 Written the Christmas cards, 
 Stocked up on canned goods, 
 Programmed the remote,
 Before we have to abandon this car
 In an off ramp
 Trying to get home 
 Before dark. 

In mid-September
We cut apart a withered elm
Amid exuberant maples splashing
Multicolored verses
Into the face of the sun.
 
Split elm smells like horse,
Says my young son.
He is right; it is the smell of the core,
As rocks have in their veins
The blood of other rocks.
 
Oak and maple split like glass;
Elm takes your wedge
And swallows it.
Beyond watching grass grow,
Nothing matters.
 
 
In North Coast Review, #20, DEC 2001

Just going to church, nothing more,
When ritual intervenes.
I’m today’s lay assisting minister,
Donning the white robe,
Encircled in cotton rope,
Waiting to carry the cup.
The pastor lifts a wafer, placing a
Circle of grain into each
Supinated hand.
“This is the body of Christ,
Given for you.”
It starts like this.
I follow, offering a brass cup
Half-filled with crimson wine.
“This is the blood of Christ, shed for you.”
The communicant dips the wafer,
Places it on her tongue.
It ends like this.
Leaving the rail, she pushes up on the wood,
Returns to her pew.
Alongside priests, incense, chanting,
Icons, mystics, shamans,
Visions, temples, mosques,
Candles, sutras,
We breathe together,
Alive in the immediate.

Here are
Pictures of the mind
Freewheeling through
Crossed sacred numbers,
Many-colored threads
Of reasoning laid out
Flat on their backs.
 
Open a little door
On the abscissa:
 
Ha!
The sudden lift felt
Racing over hilltops,
How the sun ignites
Grass green in spring,
What water says
Slipping between rocks.
 
 
 
In: Group Practice Journal ©1987 American Medical Group Association (AMGA).

Soft petals bob with each
Raindrop,
Branches overhead tossing
In the wind like horses
Freed into a spring pasture.
 
Droplets, dew-like, hung
Motionless that June
In the moonlight
On wild black cherry leaves
Behind your parents’ house.
 
It was there I asked
And you agreed
That we could last forever.
 
 

Before you,
Life seemed
Full enough;
Now
I am not surprised
To expect you
In the lily,
In our children’s eyes,
In the wind’s whisper.

I lean on the cold table.
Black plastic
Bordered in stainless.
A yellow pen hanging
By a thick white string.
Some water spilled
Watering the lilacs.
A clear plastic
Tube down her throat, no water
Except that dripping
Into her arm.
The pad on which
She wrote in little gasps, how
She wanted the air turned up,
How she felt about warm things.
 
 


In Pudding 13, 1987.