The possible face stares back at me
from across the weedy, ragged backyard,
its dark grey oval rising from the darker
striated bark of the sweetgum.

In the galaxies pooling in the waiting room
where black holes hum the prelude
to creation
we chart the shushed diagnosis
embossed in the orbit of
the body’s forgotten comets.

My mother’s white handkerchief
lies on my hand, the corners
embroidered with small flowers,
pink, blue, white. I unfold it
and find the yellow feather,
where I put it eighty years ago.

Marching men in uniforms, crisp
Navy-blue shoulders, starchy stiff
Polyester and pins
Bagpipes gasp and gather
The strength to carry the day

She disappears
takes with her
something created together
I move forward to where she stood
the absence of her presence
leaves behind a vacuum

Epicurus the Greek philosopher
tells me not to fear death.
He goes, Why should you fear death?
If you are, then death is not.

Once, in another time, I traveled with my parents
In the 1951 Ford sedan to a distant part of the city.
You could call it a city, but everyone then
Referred to it only as a town.

The hawk’s shadow follows me.
Some smoker’s tar coats my lungs,
all the tiny quivering sacs.

Like a cross stitch
I tied down your limbs
thread by thread
preventing you from flying

“No tree grows all the way to heaven,”
a darling end to a bible story
or Lenten play beginning
you might say;
a betrayal of trust

It’s really easy to forget
To put it all out of your mind
That you might be living with a debt which could be called in
Any time by that unforgiving debt collector

My Spectacles watched me seek for them
lowered their head with mine.
A clear silhouette of every
Twist
Turn
Bend

No idea where it came from,
The pipe-threading lathe
Just presented itself
On the job when it was needed.
From the truck and tools,
We rested the Mule near the alley

As near-death experiences go,
it was one of the best.
What more is there to tell?

We’re on our last legs, and the legs are last to go;
the best metaphors die young, reborn as cliches.

Shards of invention over
crisp dirt :: secreted
mouths whisper about
asexual
union and definitions :: small

Picking at the bones,
they feed from residual
ligaments left
post quiet carving

began with disinterest
proceeding to tsks tsks then
disregard

Like a title that keys no theme
Except an atmosphere, I slip into my clothes.
A doorknob, a checklist, a podcast
On an unsolved murder.

There is an army of ghost trees ringing the coastlines of the world.
Once verdant, evidence of a healthy environment,
now leafless, bleached white in death,
phantoms of the forest that once was.

This will help you to remember
what a forest was. This one, North Temperate.
Might have been where we are standing.
Here, adjust the strap
around your forehead, rest this over
the bridge of your nose. Click the button.
See.

Each corner of a globe
With no corners
Born of the sea as
Liquid or solid
In dances with humans
And dances between humans
Fear and hope meet in their own dance
As the earth cries

Each insect turns a fraction on its axis, a cocooned child shifting in a half-sleep,
oblivious beyond cool mud to flames of wildfires as they streak across the hills
of Paradise.

when they’re born…
they g r o w
they m o v e
crawl and
c a
l v
e

Looking deep into my child’s eyes,
I see both my ancestors and
my descendants, I fall
into a meditation about Mother Earth…