Some recent work. Find new poems weekly via Instagram.
SUNDAY
Close your quick eyes
let the sun, that warm washcloth,
lay neck-heavy, and hang on the railing
hanging it all way up; easy now, mortal
mind the water, slow going.
__
GLOSSOLALIA
I was never one for falling over
rather I stayed grounded or bent
knees whenever the chance
came after the pulpit emptied
and the front flooded with flesh
(I sure poured out mine); and I never
babbled like the heathen though
one day in the shower words came
I suppose; I’d rather write in tongues
than speak my mind.
__
GRACE
Grace is an under-duck on the swings
where you can shout “again!”
and there’ll always be another go
or the songbird’s melody on repeat
every morning since Abraham left Ur
for a new arrangement
or maybe just the drizzle you stand in
when you want to feel covered
in something other than regret
for once; imagine grace.
__
PARACLETE
This morning I ran through the holy
spirit crouching over the creek
before the sun rose, drinking up the last
of the night’s colour, nocturnal
slipping back into the starling’s song
disguised again until sundown.
__
FLATTENING THE CURVE
What colour do you call it
on the back of your eyelids, shut
for a moment, backlit by the sun
until you and the rest rotate a minute more
on the sofa and she’s no longer sill-framed?
Mandarin, grapefruit, lemon?
__
SABBATH BEATITUDE
Blessings are funny things
never quite sticking or leaving trace
on sober stones, as a slug might
predictive,
but floating off
cross-pollinating gardens
sporing together on soft winds
in foxtrot or waltz,
sudsing in technicolor
fast sailing out of sight, over fences
the shape of globes, blessings giggle.
__
IMPUDENCE (in haiku)
When we pray we pull
on God’s sleeve until God bends
down to pick us up.
__
ON A WINDOWSILL
There are always ladybugs
on the windowsill this time of year
when it’s bright a little sooner and
the colour returns with dew for frost.
They’re inconsequential to me
with all my heavy prayers and papers
going past in a hurry but you see them
in all their glory and smile.
There are always smiles with you
over ladybugs, over me.
__
POCKETKNIFE
The meadow at eight was greenwood
bent for bows and arrows,
hay fever on the gravel road.
Those acres flew forever
into Sherwood, Montana, Costa Rica.
Dew stuck to our shoe laces,
dusk swallowed us whole,
loosened from watch tans time
ran a dog off leash.
We conjured what we liked,
forgot what we liked, before
the coaxial could tie us down.
__
IN MEMORIAM
There will be a bench
when I’m finished gardening
when they’re talking of how I went
about weeding, pruning, planting.
Will it lie
with the others shaded
under the enormous maple trees
or sit by itself someplace hidden
found by few
setting an original scene?
I don’t mind if it’s out of the way
only that it faces what it should
the slant just right
enough to know it was my bench
not another’s, that you sit and feel
for certain you had sat with me a while.
__
(OUT OF) CONTROL
You only thought you had a hold,
that grip round the neck tightening
till life went limp.
You’re not even close to being
in your own hands. Odds are as grass
clippings we’ll dance about the place
unrecognizable from one another
in the spring wind
blowing where it wants, quietly carrying
the quarks and quasars, the unborn
and long gone alike in soft hands.
