Series: Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2011

Dear alley bent like an L, shaped like an old
god’s crooked elbow, decorated with clotheslines
heavy with wash— Nearly thirty, I skidded down
your last few meters in reverse, learning to drive
a stick shift and nearly knocking over the island
of trash bins swarming with tribes of blue-black
flies. The neighbors came to their front steps
to heckle and hoot, disturbing the chickens
kept in rusted cages in each yard: the way
they carried on with cackling, you’d think
there was an egg thief in the trees. Almost
a lifetime since I’ve left, but still I see the vivid
verdigris of rusted roofs, the graveled lane
where children sat in empty lading boxes,
then tilted themselves into the wind—
And so have I. Years later, I startle
from sleep or wakeful dream, thinking
the dwarf yellow sun brings artifacts
from that other time: a map, directions
written in code by unfaithful gods.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Whistle of wingbeats skimming the trees,
long skein of road on which we travel—
I don’t want to ask anymore about time
or provisions. I don’t want to think
about the end. The light is milky
as tempera, tentative as flight.
The hydrangea bush we thought
was dead has come back, pushing new
buds of green. At night, the garden
pillows unsaid words and dreams.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Never made new, only
made over— And so at the end

of the tale, the seeker finds
himself in the basement, in the vault

of an ice fort, somewhere in a remote
valley— In the stillness of a room,

a fire burns: old furniture, parts
of other buildings. Dust motes

make hundreds of shadows but only one
vibrates to the sound of his waking

heart. When he finds his voice, the eaves
drop their long-chiseled burdens. The world

is etched with a flurry of wings, the call
of crows; moaning, laughing, weeping.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

What is a little thing like time? Raptor,
captor, still you distress me with your
catalogue of titles: black-mantled, white-
bellied, red-thighed, chestnut-flanked,
collared, sharp-shinned harrier. The edges
of days spread across the land, their span
forming the shadow of a cross. With each
of your appearances, I startle and don’t
completely recover. Deep in the grass, see
where I sift, searching for my own lost names.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

How do I know you
have returned?

The ruffs that soften
around the necks of daffodils.

The arrogant bees
lording it over the trellis.

Bursts of pollen, tell-tale marks
like gunpowder on sleeves of pavement.

In the dark I hear the frogs again,
whetting their voices on cold creek stones.

Most of all that tendril of clear
uncertainty: knowing what could be lost.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Eat something, you say to your child.
Dry your tears. And if in the legend the birds
flew over without stopping, building a bridge
out of air to yoke one here to another there?
For years, all that humming overhead.
Every morning, the hard bread you dip
into the coffee and put in your mouth.
You say, It can’t be long now. The firefly
nourishes itself with so very little light.
What does it pine for, all night in the woods?

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.