27.

if it’s true and all these years

after going off to war, after being

lost or dead, the old, stooped

man living in the hot, green village

whose language is gone and

whose children are grown and

their names long forgotten…

if it’s not just a story and instead

a truth (we draw fine lines so

that we may cross them) then who

else might emerge, grayed or

hobbled, sputtering pigeon USA

with new yellow children (old now

too) hauling forty years of forgotten

business into the light where

the hot, green village empties into

our delta, here, where a future

built on bones and banking begs

no forgiveness at all?

26.

the wood pile versus the

tech boom versus starlight

(there again the yap-yap of

flickers) versus the wireless

night versus the blood root

versus the plasma screen (

I have been drinking) versus

that shimmering lake, off

route 28, a least bittern

balancing, stoic in the giant

reeds versus grim equations

versus dark paths to small

rivers versus (I was once a

boy…) the humming engines

the coils, the ticking versus

the yellow undersides of

these (now again) laughing

red-faced birds

25.

a blue tarpaulin
over the old boat
of the old man
who has that palsy (that same
thing that killed off Woody Guthrie
) flutters, fills with a
wind bringing awaited rain
turns, folds over itself
fights and pulls, reels
contorts - he hasn't been seen
in a dog's age and that sickness
is a prison

he used to walk the mile
to the convenience store for
coffee and to prove he was still
alive - reeling, slurring
waving hello or goodbye
pitching sideways toward the river
holding his pants up
listing away
muttering

that thing that
killed Woody Guthrie
will take out his boys too, maybe
or it won't - it's a fifty/fifty proposal
and it's just for the boys

but this wind will surely build
and finally tear the blue tarpaulin
from his boat - it will
lift (bluer) over the houses
and, soon enough
ascend

24.

brilliant suddenly

the hill behind the house

explodes yellow

with these first flowers

before leaves and

walking the river without

a jacket, before the

new nests of faithful birds

returning again and

again (take your sweet time

) our homes must sit

just so within the forsythia

23.

the coyote moves below the power lines

endless, electronic futures

black and bowed, humming overhead 

his spoor crosses our trails, follows them

reverses, then vanishes

his scat, ripe with the fur of beloved pets

and new spring fawns dries under

the hovering noonday sun

forever is nothing to him

he’s done that time already

this is about waiting

22.

torn paper, pink under

ochre, perhaps the pieces

of envelopes or labels

cursive, shards of letters

to, from – balance for

the purpose of breathing

in, out – the pages of

dictionaries, scored with

an etcher’s scribe or

whatever honed device

at hand – eyes, afloat

over ink and the edging

of beautiful stains, I

said to a friend, that’s a

railway ticket, so he

must have saved every

scrap of paper, every

trampled bit of gilded foil

each stamp (cancelled

by a doomed postal clerk

before the war) so laced

and beautiful, coded

with rhythm, rabbit glue

and prescient longing