August Night

We’ll be downstairs soon

on the wicker chaise

breathing moss and pine

ankles intertwined

We’ll be downstairs soon

sucking popsicles

licking sticky lips

smoking cigarettes

We’ll be downstairs soon

In the perseids

blinking at the sky

watching fireflies

When we’re there a while

tug my blue silk robe

say that funny thing

make us laugh again

November

Burgundy, russet, ochre, and maroon,

the dry ones rustling softly on the ground.

A balmy, bare-branch morning. Overhead

a glimpse of wing, a solo goose’s sound.

Voices call in agreement, joining ranks,

now readying to rise, positioned right --

a masterpiece of grand cacophony.

I’m graced by a perfection in their flight.

The Beaver

Once, by a marshy pond in late October

I laid in wood, and books, and cans of Campbells,

some coffee, rice, warm sweaters I’d need later.

I saw the ducks and turtles, heard the music

of mourning doves, and geese, then came the beavers.

I watched them gliding, silent, through the water.

The snow came finally, steady and relentless.

At night, the wood stove sparking, kindling crackling,

I’d hear outside a snap then branches rustling.

Each quiet, blinding morning I’d discover

More spear tips sticking through the icy blanket,

gnawed spikes the only clue to land or water.

All winter, beavers, haughty and indignant,

possessive of the young trees, felled and carted

through driving snow, through freezing water, homeward.

One night the big one eyed me with derision,

stopped in his tracks, he gripped his pine to scold me,

“You hide here from your little human sorrow,

we do all this to sanctify our burrow.

You have to tear things down and make some ruin

to resurrect a home you should go back to.”

Prima Vera

I’m jealous of the spring. It calls my kittens

outside to hunt, to stalk around, and play.

They were content for me to rub and pet them,

they took my lap in comfort yesterday.

Spring always has more liveliness than I do

waking the secrets slumbering below.

Its day is longer than my usefulness is.

I have no patience, and my pace is slow.

And unlike me, spring knows the truth and tells it.

My truth and wonder, it’s so far and wee.

I knew it once, I trust that I did know it,

but now I know it’s never been for me.

But meanwhile, through my window, what I can see

is proof of spring’s good fortune: people smiling,

and walking, and the muddy earth emerging,

while little cats find possibilities.