What Hours Were These Ours
1
The ends of weeks–
their mornings, middle hours.
Beginnings. Once
when I brought forgiveness
from my rock garden,
gone two years neglected:
Category / Poetry
I Contemplate Change while Reading Bleak House at Galley Bay
I dip into this tale of displaced children,
orphaned, waiting on their fortunes,
this summer of my own displacement.
The house has sold, my husband tells me,
his voice hollowed out by the phone.
We have to be out in sixty days.
The Man in the Costume
In your final days you entered the stage in a body
Near skeletal, with skin the feel of parchment ready
To tear, with that smell of sullen sweetness—was it
Cheap perfume from the last user who took that prop
As his own to exit from what he called his life?
Spanish Moss
It is Spanish moss
I fell in love with,
lace around a Live Oak tree
its feathery fingers dangling
from lengthy limbs,
Eukaryotes
of the time:
There were two kingdoms of living things,
animals and plants.
Fungi were classed as plants
Wordless
When I was two years old
and never quiet, you said
you’d toss me in the Plymouth coupe
and take me for a ride.
Only seeing the Oregon countryside
Missing
If there is no body, is there no crime?
Her killer will always be free.
Staring at Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”
You thought you were a winged being
until you came to Earth and fought
for a parking spot when late
Continue reading… "Staring at Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”"Two Crows
New to this place, I hear a crash
and see my neighbor loading his recycle bin
hidden from the street. Face set to his work
he doesn’t see me at the kitchen sink
waiting for songbirds in the boundary trees.
Continue reading… "Two Crows"As If We’d Walked Through Fire Together
In the back yard of my neighbor’s house,
a face forms from corkscrew willow:
hair line and brows of twigs, the branch end’s
dark eyes partially hidden by ferns.
My sister’s features brighten in the sun’s
Continue reading… "As If We’d Walked Through Fire Together"