Living

The one horse you gave me
you took back when she went insane,
when she began to chew wood
instead of the expensive grain
we bought from the feed store,
the grain that had the sweet smell
of molasses and was good for even
us to chew. She turned into
an ugly thing with her wild thoughts,
and I forgot about the beauty
expected of her when her blanket
filled out and complemented
her chestnut body and the name
the Nez Percé gave her. She rotted
and began to stink of promises

On abandon, uncalled for but called forth.
The hydrangea
Of   her crushed each year a little more into the attar of   herself.
Pallid. Injured, wildly capable.
A throat to come home to, tupelo.
Lemurs in parlors, inconsolable.
Parlors of burgundy and sleigh. Unseverable fear.
Wistful, woke most every afternoon

Mouthful of earth, hair half a century silvering, who buried him.
With what. Make a fist for heart. That is the size of it.
Also directives from our  DNA.
The nature of  his wound was the clock-cicada winding down.
He wound down.
July, vapid, humid: sails of sailboats swelled, yellow boxes
Of   cigars from Cuba plumped. Ring fingers fattened for a spell.

Frosty, green through gray rising steeply,
top of the bank a big top, red with a sign,
misty, fantastical on the walk to school.

“My sister can’ t express herself properly.

Imagine if those performers
were stuck in their caravans
forever. If round the back of the big top
the doors were locked. That’ s her.

She’ s a trapeze artist, lion tamer,
cramped clean-faced clown
drinking tea, practicing tricks,
movement through frosted windows.

Language is her caravan on bricks,
with tiny little windows in.”

An old man with a new hat
is running out of pride.
I want to tell the truth
but I don’ t know how.
The wind is our best pen
and it blows poetry out of the water.

I wait for days and weeks to enter
a feeling that’ s had years to leave.
The ocean keeps throwing questions
it has all the answers to.
A candle lights a room
and dims the stars.

At the table, at the grave not knowing
whether to grieve or celebrate, they seemed
to find a way within the stalled noon clatter
and the dusk over oily swamps and elder tangle
along a locked stockade of heavy machines,
as the blue heron, looking down, flew farther on.
Nothing dissolved for them the mortal green
and black in transparent power of spacious streams
now gone from earth. The flickering they found,
terror-hope-terror, in fire of sunset clouds
remained unwavering in its progress to night

My pa he didn’ t go to town
Last evening after tea,
But got a book and settled down
As comfy as could be.
I’ ll tell you I was offul glad
To have my pa about
To answer all the things I had
Been tryin’ to find out.

Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes,
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes,
And eyes and ears and mouth and nose,
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.

My father has a pair of shoes
So beautiful to see.
I want to wear my father's shoes.
They are too big for me.

My baby brother has a pair
As cunning as can be.
My feet won't go into that pair.
They are too small for me.

There's only one thing that I can do
Till I get small or grown.
If I want to have some fitting shoes
I'll have to wear my own.

The way a tired Chippewa woman
Who’ s lost a child gathers up black feathers,
Black quills & leaves
That she wraps & swaddles in a little bale, a shag
Cocoon she carries with her & speaks to always
As if it were the child,
Until she knows the soul has grown fat & clever,
That the child can find its own way at last;
Well, I go everywhere