Photo taken while driving home from work, 1-10-13
It is a day’s work we do,
And where does one find its end?
I was a teacher for twenty years;
Ex-students still haunt me in K-Mart
And at Sonic and in nightmares
About pajamas and podiums, Continue reading
North enters the story with one sweep
Of the wind’s cold hand. It bruises you
With its knowledge of You can never
Leave. You cannot unbend the steel
You placed so carefully along your spine.
But the wind is more than cannot. Continue reading
For Curt
The road goes north or east,
And no one knows if it might end
Or where. The sycamores lift leafy heads
Away from the highway’s movement
Above bridges still being built.
The exit calls to you
Like a childhood classmate you don’t
Remember but recognize anyway.
LED billboards jangle the night
Into a kind of hyperactive silence
On the edge of the city. Continue reading
If I return to you, I will remember
my life before the mountain and fall,
The house I left to enter,
And the strength of your call.
If I return to you, I will linger
to smooth down your wings
With the tips of my fingers,
Until we touch the morning. Continue reading
We stopped the white Chevy with the rusted tailgate,
Half in the ditch, and walked up the hillside,
Through the pine trees and scrub oak, fall leaves
Like letters in an abandoned apartment cracking
Under our feet. There was nothing and everything
To see in the woods, the snake skin, coyote scat,
Half-hidden killdeer nest, muddy water of the hollow.
He pointed these things out to me, a child learning
to see from her father. We all learn
To see from the people who came before us. Continue reading
