I've been searching for years,
even in slumber, to find it;
I am sleeping for the dream
where you break open the silence
like an eggshell and tell me the answers
to the questions I forgot to ask.

A robin brushes my hair
as she sails to her spot
in the cedar; my particular
browns and greys
are the optimum colors
to camouflage a nest.

Those goddamned mournful cypress trees
obscuring the gaze of your dying eyes,
the lake rising around us,
the car driving into a tomorrow
I could not have imagined--
where is your voice?

Our legs buckle under
her vast shadow
just inches above
our knotted fists,
but this time we see light
through her empty talons,
her scudding tail
as she returns, humiliated,
to her hungry eaglets.

It would be a breakthrough
or a breakdown--
she wasn't always sure 
which one was coming.

The eagle visits
almost daily now;
this morning, in fact,
she even tagged along
to the post office
wanting to help me
fetch the crate
of day-old ducklings.

"Embrace your confusion," he had said,
"you may take it as a sign of direction,"
so she and her angst
walked hand-in-hand into the sunset.

Afternoons, they play at being
pink flamingoes lounging by the pool,
balanced on one leg;
evenings, they're flamenco dancers
clacking bills like castanets,
but mornings are hard work
for ducks being ducks
eating slugs being slugs
and making us eggs for breakfast.

Today, if I hear something more
than "Have a nice day," or
"Have a good holiday," 
I might just glisten
as though I'd swallowed a star
as though you'd written a poem
      and dedicated it to me
as though the whole world stopped 
      for something real.

The garden gate arches into
the roof of a gypsy caravan
intending to stay for as long
as the weather holds.

He drove an amphibian on the shores 
of Guadalcanal--
broad-shouldered in a marine uniform--
he smoked Lucky Strikes
sang Alouette 
loved Gone With the Wind
and cheap wine
and big steaks 
and pretty girls.

I love that you love
to talk;
I also love to talk
sometimes.

And so for each impassioned gift she gave him,
he would only see his own good fortune,
never the sweat on her brow; 
he saw each stone that fell from the facade 
as a bump in the road, never as the beginning 
of a mountain they would not be able to scale.

We leave the windows cracked at night
for the newly-discovered comet--
209/P Linear (which we give a different name)--
to cast its shadow on our dreaming.

There are only a handful of days 
until the wind sweeps away your chance
to say something meaningful to the sculptor who, 
with the power of love and trust, 
once made you look real.  

Like clockwork, the tanager
returns from the tropics
the week before Memorial Day,
reminding us that nothing
goes away forever.

When you are fifty years old
you will have a large party, 
after which you will begin to
announce your age to everyone 
because you can't actually believe it,
or, you will never mention it again, 
because you can.

Our grandmother's life, a string
of amber beads locked inside
the rock of her Bohemian language.

I want to talk to you about miracles, 
their lean pretense, their raised eyebrows 
as they stare you down 
when you have waited so long 
that you no longer recognize them,
and as they edge you off of the road
you stare back, appalled, 
then turn and walk away 
because we all know
miracles can't be trusted.

Here is the recipe
you've been looking for,
she said, giving me
her way of turning
a dozen paltry moments
into a luminous day.

I crawl 
through dirt
search each blade of grass
breathe in warm, sweet-smelling spring
looking for Wednesday's words,
wondering when my world
became so small.

Dark clouds snake
across the island,
their bellies bulging
with somber news
from the open sea.

As we age, clarity wanes 
edges of sound and sight soften;
even memory dims. . .
the answers
are neither black nor white,
unless we cover our ears
and stop, refuse to listen.

The ducks descend
on the compost pile,
throwing off its straw cozy
to get to their steaming
pot of worms.

In his world, the news is always bad;
the person with the job pays,
in his world if you don't have money problems,
you can't possibly have problems. . .
the more pitiful your situation, 
the more he will like you. . .
in his world, someone else is responsible
for his flaws, and many times
that person is you.

Robin, towhee, varied thrush--
each a different shade of orange--
when startled from their covers
raise the same alarm.

The answer was tangled  
in her emotions 
and in the fine tooth comb 
of her dreams.

He dreamt about
my twin last night,
and when he leaves
the house at dawn
I tell him--Don't be mad;
she will always
turn away; she can never
quite remember
exactly who you are.

She had been living on old poems
and chicken noodle soup
for far too long.

I wonder where you are,
why I haven't heard:
Are you still in that shining
moment on the hill?
Or has the swamp
called you back under--
we both know there's
nothing in between.

When you don't read
the world begins to close in on you,
and when the world begins to close in on you
it makes your world smaller, 
and when your world is smaller
it becomes impossible 
to think big thoughts.

The sword ferns scale the wall outside,
threatening to invade our bedroom;
we crank the casement window closed
severing their fingers.

Young people aren't supposed to think about dying;
they are busy with soccer games and sleeping in. . .
they have more important things to do 
like hanging out with friends
and being invincible. 

Unseasonably warm--
web worms open their tents
in the apple trees,
an escarpment of knees collapse
beneath a bistro table,
a drowsy couple decides what to do
when the bottle is empty.

She ran a tight ship
and that is likely what saved me. . .
the schedule. . .
when things started happening 
that weren't normal, I could always 
depend on "the schedule".  . . but 
last night, when the ceiling began to shake,
I knew the past would find me 
no matter where or when I left it.

I'm sorry, but that one word,
that bullet I shot
to the heart of the matter,
will never be retrieved.

I wonder if my children could spend a day
pulling weeds and believing 
in clover, daydreaming
in the warm, soft grass
of summer.

Violet-green swallows
gorge on mosquitoes, gnats, and flies
rustled by my husband's mowing,
the evening still bright,
their promises fulfilled.

My mother sang, "I'm looking over a four-leaf clover,"
when she did her work, so the days we all pulled weeds,
I sifted thoughtfully through each bunch of clover,
knowing the possibilities
looking for those four leaves
as carefully as I could,
believing.  

We left the wind waves lecture believing
one needs a mind of water to understand the sea;
we have minds of grass.

There's no forecasting the weather in Kansas
though they insist upon it,
there's no use talking about the wind,
its fickle and wild and occasionally destructive nature: 
here, the people are more predictable
than the weather.  

The ducks are still wearing
their plague doctor masks
fashioned from mud
after the morning rain.

Sometimes the answers look at you with startled faces:
sometimes you pretend you don't see them--
other times they sing to you in the rhythm of an ordinary day--
sometimes the answers wave goodbye 
from the freight car of a passing train
while you are kneeling  in the dirt, 
having lost your way, in Kansas.

My vision clears
looking through
the unwashed window.

The grand irony:
what some people do
in the name of youth
makes them look like
Batman's villain,
"The Joker". . .

All in the name of science,
the cedar waxwing, Bombycillidae cedrorum,
gorges on over-ripe berries and stumbles
excitedly out of the hawthorn, too drunk to speak,
while Troglodytes pacificus, the Pacific wren,
trills its report at thirty syllables a second.

The lunch crowd is unhappy
save for a privileged few;
the breakfast crowd
knows what a waste of time it is
to wish things otherwise,
so they think of their daughter in Spokane,
the bloom of old garden roses along the fence,
and the dog that waits at home
for the sound of their footsteps. . .
the lunch crowd swallows all the air 
in the room searching for time,
but time just gives them 
a backward glance as she bounds
through the door.

The Japanese maples ringing the clearing
weep in the late afternoon rain;
the bottle of sake stored in the pantry
springs a sympathetic leak.

What is life 
if not 
things left undone?

Drumming high in a hollow cedar,
a Pileated sounds its mate across the ravine;
after fifty-seven false starts,
our day finally has a rhythm.

When the lunch crowd comes,
I leave
preferring the breakfast crowd:
the smell of coffee and burnt sugar
to the smell of grill
and the sound of hurry. . .
the breakfast crowd crinkles
their newspapers
the old men smile
over the steam of their coffee.

We could let this moment storm over,
or we could ride its eye
until it makes landfall.

The skeletal remains of elapsed yesterdays
lay before her. . . surely 
she could fashion one more life for herself
with all those bones.

After the cold morning rain
steam rises from the garden
like some kind of tropical joke.

I am between here and there,
standing in the shadows
pretending to breathe.

Rocks pop up like dandelions
planted by the last glacier
and wait for the next one
before they'll go to seed.

I can't come any closer,
something could break
I will hold you at arm's length--
we will all be safer for it--
the pages will turn
to the same old story:
the book will read itself.

A pair of golden eagles,
a double wedding ring,
an eternal pattern
wearing thin.

It's 97 degrees outside;
my thoughts melt
into another mess
that will need to be
washed, dried
and swept away,
and I will need
to think again.

The new neighbor
has a name,
marten, which sounds
friendly enough--
a favorite uncle
or the stock boy
at the grocery store--
but don't be fooled,
he's the one who'll
sneak onto your property
while you're asleep
and eat your poultry
raw.

What is real
needs no introduction
it does not need
to explain itself
its meaning is clear
what is real
doesn't dwell on troubles
its mishaps are few
what is real
needs no conclusion
as it stands like a soldier
at the end of the world.

We heard the sound of rapture,
a thump against the bedroom window,
then found the pair of chickadees
lying side by side on the path below,
the space between their silent beaks
the thickness of a pane of glass.