The drumbeat fades
as our friend takes his leave
unexpectedly . . .
we shake our heads
we wring our hands
there are no words to speak.

The funiculars
at Sandy Point
unzip the bluff
and from time to time
bring it to its knees.

The dominos fall down around her;
the nips wear mournful faces . . .

Every breath
a parachute
delivering you
safely to the ground.

Go buy yourself some dinner--
hydrogenated or on the rocks--
let's lean in together 
and pretend.

Why can't love and grief
start traveling in separate cars?

The ground finally breathes
as the rain whispers,
then sizzles . . .

The trail at the top of the world
is littered with mating beetles
and hungry robins.

The trees comb the sky 
with delicate branches,
move slightly in the sunlight
to temper the wind.

Its schedule confounded by yet another
dramatic monologue of fog,
the ferry dock groans
under its backlog of tourists
napping behind their wheels,
oblivious to the troupe of pigeon guillemots
clowning for them overhead.

There's a wolf howling at my door 
and the sky is about to break . . .
still, say something specific
and I will listen.

A communion of blackbirds
chants for the morning sun
to burn its glory hole
through the fog.

After the storm
the grass is covered with the crust of sycamore;
it must be growing again, 
stretching, splitting
unable to be contained
and though nothing is wrong,
I feel so helpless--
its tender bark lying in fragments around me.

A little left of the abandoned
airstrip, now just a sunburned
avenue of grass, Waterman's Rock
commands the landscape
with a loneliness twice
as large as its house.

In my dream
I am walking through city streets
in the dark with no fear
to Gentilly and it all comes back to me
the house on St. Ferdinand,
cypress trees hanging long and low, 
honeysuckle tangled on the wrought iron gate
which I open slowly
and I am home to see my father . . .
I knock and wait, knock and wait . . .
I cannot believe, even in slumber,
that he is gone.

The night's needle eye
meant to admit
a skein of drunken angels
lets slip instead
a plague of restless hours.

I'm climbing back in
and I won't pretend
that I like what I see--
things don't need to 
mean anything 
and the robins still sing
don't hold me responsible
don't hold me.

Six hours after the solstice,
summer is already weary
of having people stare
at her naked body.

Though the sound of her footsteps
was familiar, she could not remember
what came next after the walking . . . 
and the incessant wailing was distracting--
why were there so many sirens now?

The barred owlet warns the clearing
of its adolescent angst and hunger
with its penny whistle voice.

There was no doubt in her mind:
Shakespeare was the only man 
who could save her now.

All morning long,
the sun lingers
on the outskirts of knowing
how to grant our wish
for a warm summer day;
by noon it's clear
we'll have to wait
another day.

I stand here, hands on hips,
wondering which path to take
to find the words that lost me.

No matter where we go,
we find something there
already beginning
to move away from us.

Restless in mid-June,
she watches helplessly 
as Kansas wind 
scuffs clouds 
caught between
spring's brilliant forsythia
and imminent August,
with its wilted flora
and suffocating heat--
she was angry 
with knowing.

It's too early for the owl,
or too late, neither she nor I
is sure, but here she is,
nonetheless, lazily perched
on the squirrel feeder, waiting
for dinner to be served.

I hear it in the closet,
beneath the attic fan in the hall,
I hear it over my morning coffee--
even the children stand askance to listen
when those wrens begin to pipe--
wrens are chirping in our attic
baby wrens
they sound so happy--
it would be sacrilege 
to disrupt that kind of bliss--
no lolling in the past
or smothering in the present
while birds sing exuberantly,
yet it's only a matter of time
before they shriek my life away.

The first word was a mistake,
a trip down the wrong path,
but we took it anyway,
and look where we are now.

The weather,
the weekend,
what we had for lunch--
we aim for the mundane
as though we must 
enervate space,
as though silence
was a predicament
to be overcome.

The oil will sulk in the pan
all afternoon waiting
for just a little heat
to make it come to life.

While I wait for you,
I wash the dishes
and stare out of the window
for some kind of sign 
that soon the sound 
of your footsteps
will draw near
and you will wrap
your arms around my life 
and hold it close.

Electricity snakes
through the garden
in bright orange skin,
alarming the ducks
with its power to deliver
light before dawn.

Despite the weeds and hot, hot sun
the petunias turn their innocent
faces to the sun
black-eyed susans keep my secrets
hibiscus has a new coral bloom
each morning--

Clover blossoms
in the lawn, thick
as the Milky Way;
the doe spends
every day here
feeding on stars
in broad daylight.

Strawberry moon binds
my shadow to the night sidewalk
leads me to myself
the trees whisper their secret
crickets lean into their song.

Look at it from the other side--
the spiral has another way to go.

Tonight the moon is following my every move;
it is neither waning nor obscured by clouds,
it is high and luminous and full
of possibility.

I've arrived--
looks like paradise--
but where are you--
you said you'd
be here too.

Which bird trembles first
when the rest of them follow,
when the best of them shadow
so skillfully, teeming 
with purpose?

A third of the way through June,
the temperature at dawn
is only forty eight degrees;
summer takes her time here,
more patient than the five-point buck
steamrolling the ferns
anxious for his breakfast.

Sometimes things just break 
and it's not a sign of anything. . .
sometimes doors open for no reason,
so we say it's just the wind.

Sometimes you need this
kind of Tuesday--
the wet, grey glue that
holds your life together.

Locust song fills the space between the river
and the road, between yesterday and today,
though there are no locusts in this life
and the world has settled to a slow hum.

You'd think that Swainson's thrush
would tire of this rigid schedule,
but he's always up ten minutes
after I am, and he never fails
to follow me to bed.

You know how it happens--
one day you're sifting seed into soil,
cropping the hedges, comfortable breezes
grazing your skin. . .
but before long
sycamore leaves crackle
beneath your feet. . . 
pine and brier resist,
but the garden aches and declines
until it is impossible to mend.

A horde of starving caterpillars
swarms my chair, beguiled
by the iron flowers wrought
into its legs and arms and back;
most of them will surely die
before they come to realize
their careless mistake.

She had been full of hope once,
she must have been, and
she had been grateful. . .
she remembered this quite clearly--
it is an arduous process to squander
such emotions, still, 
she had managed it.

The deer simply turns her head
away, erasing me
from her sight and thereby
perfecting the wilderness.

These days she waited for time
to swallow itself and move past
the details that were impeding
her descent.

Mr. Wilson's warbler,
a gold coin glinting
through half-lit fog.

We must examine the "in-between,"
we can't just study "this" and "that"
it's the "in-between"
that keeps us moving. . .

Somewhere between
a sleeping bag
and a sarcophagus--
trying to get the height
of the new bed
just right.

He said "goatique" instead of "goatee"
and
"handy-down" instead of "hand-me-down". . .
he said she taught him to laugh at himself
he said, "maybe you never really know,"
and she raised her eyebrows
"maybe it's a crapshoot," he said. . .
he said, "I thought we'd just settle,"
well, you probably know
what she said to that.

My rats--everyone on the island
has them--are hungry, bold, unafraid
of my threats to wring their necks
each time I rise from this chair,
but my husband has a different plan
involving waiting and a weapon
and an engineer's precision, yet I know
we'll walk into the house at dusk
with similar results.

There's a cabin
up on the hill
I've never seen
I live real close to it
do you know 
what I mean?

The carcass lies dismembered
on the freshly-mowed grass;
whoever built this swing set
didn't mean for it to go this way,
but where it stood derelict,
abandoned by its youth,
there's room for something new to start
and decades left to let it grow.

She remembers a life
that was once hers,
so far displaced
it seemed impossible
that she moved 
within it;
further back
was yet another
life, one which 
she could no longer 
reconcile as her own.

The web worm population
has exploded this spring--
even on sunny days now
we need our umbrellas to walk
under their medieval villages
when they're cleaning house
and emptying chamber pots
out their open windows.

For years I wondered 
about the souls of the dead;
now I know they gambol
as hypnagogic imagery,
yet, from a point of knowing, 
we all want to know less.

The ghost
in the garden,
the swing set
missing
its swings.