Snail

Whorled baby
fist, stuck fast
against my window
pane, don’t you see
me trying to sleep?
How I envy you.
Take leave of
me—Go, now,
and disappear
into your own
den, which you
fill completely.

Bruise

When the hawk flies from the sunset on the other side of the sky
to the grove of trees by the river, my throat tightens, my eyes

rest not on the hawk

but on its shadow, on rock, on bark,
all belief suspended and the bruise of light wavering

on rims of bark. I recall the yellow light
of the sun starting to descend and the way

the neighbors sat on their side porches to watch with a kind
of wonder. What is it these people yearn for?

My own desires

so strong they are written
on my skin, but in a foreign language deciphered

when the shadow of the hawk in this remaining
light takes flight

curving the hill like silence cut from ruins.

[published in Tar River Review]

Fog

Geese, in the fog,
glide by the dark mass of dock, their subtle
bob intent on a single shore.

Egyptian heads, occasionally an ancient
bark to mark their clumsiness on land—all neck
and legs and wobble.

One rises, stretches wings above the flock.
He preens and shudders, then rejoins the rest as they resume
their mission: to be black

against this whiteness.

Here, On the Chester

Wind sweeps the river’s
secrets down to shell and mud

and air. Three herons stroll through puddles
after minnow-spark. Straddling rock

and sand, a sycamore drops its mottled bark
on a bank that soon

will disappear. Rivers grow larger, rivers grow
small. Here, where the dead like pebbles rise

among the weeds, I’ll build my house
on water.

End of the Season

White on white, the work boat
scrubs the fog outside my window,
churning up the clam shell

bones of the water, towing
a cloud of paper gulls — the wall,
the sky, to my eye everything

the same color: winter, waiting
to receive the smoke of our fires