The stray dog in the photo
Mary Lou took the year before
she died was me, she said,
always drifting. In my defense,
the dog is sniffing the scrub and nothing
of the Utah desert,
cool and lovely I imagine
after morning rain,
itself a traveler
and shape-shifter, mentor to coyotes
who wait for you to blink,
then disappear beyond the frame.
From Many Suns Will Rise
Smoke lonely and delicious
cigarettes in the moon-
cratered parking lot.
Hop in the truck to prune
maples in the graceful
rhythms of a man
who has something to do.
Do it well. Hoist
a leafy branch filled
with April light and bear it
in the blue day
like a green torch.
From On the Edge of a Very Small Town
Enfolded by pure darkness
a train slips through the hills,
past the occasional litter of homes
leaking garish light.
In a kitchen window, the silhouette
of an enormous man who thinks,
gazing at the train,
he could love anyone on board.
From Appalachian Night
To everyone today, thanks for the memories.
Thank you, oh town fathers, thank you Chamber of Commerce,
for the freshly minted gimmick
of the Rebel re-enactor
nursing a Big Gulp, who refreshed our understanding
of what it was like to sit around
on itchy cheeks and wait
for the Yanks to come. Thank you, Garden Club
biddy who clutched a wrinkled script
and told us everything
we never wanted to know about
the hideous furniture
in the antebellum home of General A.P. Hill.
Muchas gracias, April grass,
for remembering to be green,
a Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, He-has-risen green,
green of Augusta fairways,
of deep center field.
High-five, dogwood trees for remembering to blossom
into softness,
thanks for sending pink parachutes
to subjugate the lawn, thank you common sense
for keeping me from Mary's grave, I would have only stared
like a netted cod,
and from her small white house
with its shiny new
aluminum siding like
fresh bandages, many thanks and a huge “I'm sorry” to
the artist from Peru,
all of twenty-one,
you have miles to go, señor, and so bemoaned the closing
of your tiny gallery
with calm. You said your chickens
were killed by two wild dogs, a tragedy you painted
in black-and-white acrylics,
the colors of the mutts,
who were “simply hungry.” The whole town was, I thought,
hungry for the past,
the present and the future
to reveal themselves before we go to bed
and close our eyes and in the little
winter of our slumbers, slowly, thankfully,
remember to forget.
From Appalachian Night
absence
giving presence
a lap dance
From Many Suns Will Rise
eyes closed,
paperback
pressed against
his chest,
breathing slowly
in the dark
as mysteries
whisper through
his Banlon
shirt into
his unsolved
heart
From Many Suns Will Rise
I thought of
telephone poles
strung along
the ditches
some tilted
as if drunk
or merely old
and weary
of all these words,
leaning,
picking up
a distant
signal from
a time
when they were trees.
From On the Edge of a Very Small Town
the room darkens
for music
from another room
From On the Edge of a Very Small Town
Bourbon floods the curving
two-lane of the tongue.
The moment stretched like red-wing
blackbird tules, we are
lost again and savor
every green word.
From Every Green Word
This motel room spare,
cool as a shoebox.
Perfectly designed
for things that walk away.
From Every Green Word
They float from the Impala
to wait in line for burgers,
staring, not speaking,
improvising cooly
in the manner of Chet Baker,
purely on the blue
silence introducing
each halting note.
From Every Green Word
Like a Shaker bowl,
the house contained the silence
of belief and
like a Navajo basket
containing none of our business
it is keeping quiet,
deathly still, in fact,
about God's plans.