like Rockford

I wonder where the crows are

going as the car grinds the curb,

another set of eyes entangled in

the flesh and bones of this burned

down day, each breath a delayed 

payment, sentience a beat down 

the moment you wake, the child

holding my hand never mine as 

you walk away from your kin and tribe,

as if fleeing was all that’s left, coils

unwinding as I loose the incense,

blessings unwound as they leave 

me burning on the altar,

frying pan and fire another 

payment I evade, this 

distance built between us all.

Dead Sea scroll

How ridiculous these stubborn buds

boring through the barebones 

limbs that drowse and sway,

chill winds and deific sun 

chattering away, the dull deliberate 

badinage hammering hard at 

this day’s brave facade. So it

goes along as it comes, detail to detail

the memory is marched to the top, 

this lived on died on hill, mingling 

the lifelong and the tossed aside,

your name still an exclamation—

thunder and fire and love 

busting down the gates. My name

whirlwinds and dust devils,

a burden for the broom,

an exhalation of this obdurate absence.

beheld

It is nothing but something 

you remark on, like the weather or

the predilection of the falling 

swallow, the drag of the moon,

the drawl of the tide. Each day

the collected works rather than 

the greatest hits, played and replayed 

until the world skips and pops

about the stylus of your

sentience, the one and the next one

a story told in leaf and bloom, 

this once and future form

an average taken for a rule,

a mirror that meets its measure

in your eyes, some native

radiance or the sturdy 

affirmation of beauty’s boundaries.

So we turn these words through 

our salted fields and haunted

gardens, taking them as thorn or

rose, watering away at one

wolf or the other, the story only 

alive in the telling, each of us

both gossip and gospel.

grandeur

No more the slab to 

hide the bones, 

the roots and shoots

split the stones resting 

tenuous upon plot and curb,

the sidewalk cracked, the wide

wasted drive spitting 

green and wild in this, 

the warming world. So

there’s nothing to be said

these words and phrases 

claimed as exception 

only a rule of thumb, 

what is and what’s to come 

urgent only to the conceits of

flesh and wonder while 

the earth pulls us under,

sentiment no match for sediment,

no tongue to hold my name.