the soul dumbstruck
or riven by lightning;
a tunnel in a mountainside

into which the wind, the night,
the feeble light by the roadside,
and a blind seam of winged

insects can go careening:
meaning a thing has moved,
casualty of wonder.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

if she had sold them surreptitiously
to the recruiter who wanted to know if they

were virgins; if the trail of bread or pebbles
shining in the moonlight was replaced

by coils of concertina wire, and the house
of sugar dreams boiled down into a soup

of rubber sap and insect wings— There’d be
no chance to buy time with a chicken bone

held up between the slats of a cage. Only the fire
would be a constant, a raging eager to be fed.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

was there another more blameworthy than herself?
For instance, the parent that had run to the store.

The emptiness of spare rooms, inhabited only
by furniture. That she liked pockets, hiding

away in a corner with a board book in hand?
How was she to know the welcome from

the unwelcome advance? Memory, such
an unreliable witness. And yet

every thin ferrule of grass hides a blade
springing up in the after-passage.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

How did we walk all summer and into the next
season of rain? But we did, as if into the arms

of our most familiar, into the flesh of our everyday
fate. Did we have time to make garments out of our

recurring laments? We must have cried out in the heat,
in the cold; or clung to a bridegroom, an archipelago

of circling desires. Sometimes to wait is not an option.
Sometimes the only thing to do is hurry into the coming storm.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

And sounds skitter like birds
tumbled from a high wire, like spiders
shaken from slumber with the sudden
snap-open of umbrellas.

The syllables I form with my mouth,
you send back as slightly misshapen
echoes— as if a child tried to turn
a page with sticky fingers.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.