A Resolution of Seasons

The weathers, within & without, are bullies that harangue my resolve.     

The January ditch puddles have turned to ice. I’ll hang to my resolve.

Once, near Florence, I lived a year on a farm with a few gray guineas.

Today, a pale sun in the winter sky. Debris & wind bang at my resolve.

Every summer I’d lie in clover & listen to the opera of the bees.

I’d close my eyes while, aria by aria, they sang of my resolve.

O foul politicians, quit your sour promises. I don’t believe you’ll save

our trout or streams. Your penny-ante schemes jangle my resolve.

November in the produce market when the clementines arrive,

I rejoice at their dimpled skin—their juice, the annual tang of my resolve.

In their hives, bees form winter clusters & shiver to warm their queens.

The clover necklaces I threaded every summer, a bitter pang to my resolve.

At last we jump the river & the nights begin to shorten—shadows, too.

This cold, open-heart season, Susan, is yin to the yang of my resolve.


Men Friends

My wish for you: a menu of them—

manicotti, menudo, mangoes,

clementines. For today and mañana.

Nights gerrymandered,

not for romance but for you—

dreams of manatees, menageries,

gardens of stamens and ripe manure.     

Your manse, or manger—atop          

filaments, the roots of mangrove.

Menopause, too, a good omen.

Time to sow and mend,

unman a little. Begone

old mendicancy of torn raiments.

Nothing menial. No curse

of dementia or lament. Hello,

odd moments of emancipation.

Manna rains from Manitou Island.

Count on it, a manifesto of amens.

Annotation of No

His head turns like an enormous knob,

and I am deep in November snow. A novice

at snorting barbs, I can knock-knock him.

Or nozzle his brow, douse this inferno. Neither

horn nor piano, he notches up the noise.

He thinks he’s normal. I say unobtrusive

as an albino nomad. He longs for anointment

with gold at noontide. I say anoint him—snotty

and snorkeled—a noxious non sequitur. Anorexic,            

the gnome that snoops his brain. Enough!

Denounce his nonsense and tie his noodles

into pornographic, unoxygenated knots.


A Calm & Milky Sea

Yesterday at the beach, more blue in the sky

than expected, and we all said goodbye.

Inside the pavilion, two wooden crates

with a sign, Wear and share:

his bow ties and ascots. His suspenders

and hats—a man eccentric and crazy

about clothes. Each of us

chose something of his. For me,

a navy polka-dot ascot. Mine now.

I tried to give it back. Some things

are not returnable. Like a day lacking

one who was once here. Like years of living

in that little house on Hickory Avenue

with a brother forever leaning toward the sea.


After the Storm

Sleepwalker bees balance on toes

inch by inch. Or some-

thing wished for like toes, while they test

the tilt of lilies. The state

of saw palmettos raveling at the seam.

With force the wind has smote

a little green. Serrated edges now tame

like drifts of days not quite the same.

A violinist plays on a nearby moat.


Along Highway 41

Loblollies sway, and I want to roam

to mossy shadows, a twig-and-vine town—

to live in loose fringes, atilt, unfound.

Ride a little rhythm—some quiet womb,

unchambered nautilus, there dwell.

Or some breezy place that rouses

more tangle than hum, a rope of vows

to swing from, above the lacy veil

of broadleaf gossip. In wilt or bloom,

season to season, someday soar

above briars and nettles, the pang

of loneliness dying like a star,

midnight and mystery to hang

over me. No log, no nest, to call home.


The Mortons

                                              Albemarle, NC

Their house, white & unshuttered—no brick or brass.

On the back stoop, a broom. Nearby, a wash pot

sits in the yard, home to chickens & one rooster.

She’s a short, chunky woman whose best apron

is where she wipes her hands. He takes to the woods

on most spring days to gather berries, his ax

waiting where he left it propped against the fence.

A daring child could climb pickets. Would they fence

her small face from rooster, tree trunk & ax?

What she knows best: edge of blueberry woods,

clothesline & clover, pockets of another apron.

The hens, busy scratching, ignore the ax & rooster.

A house of four sons makes daily use of a wash pot.

Better, brooms & chickens than brick or brass.


Woman by the Road

tall & middle-aged     day by day

eight miles from town     in a dress

or skirt that swirled       brown arms

folded & unfolded she’d talk

to herself & dance her hands pace     

though she wasn’t jittery just off

        the road’s rumble strip     

eyes not watching others she’d melt

into moves     like a child in a swing

     good at it     

if I said      the woman by the road  

to my husband or a neighbor

     either knew the one I meant

drivers slowed some wheeled by     

as if their own time mattered more     

she I feared for now gone     where

I wonder did her kin send her away

     I think     I think

she has fled the world     the smile

still hanging in air     by the road

on real days     when she stood there

the smile flared     & tilted to glee

     her head tipped back     slightly

     if you were the driver     

beside her     how could you not listen    

inhale a song     you’ll never sing


In Praise Of

Thank you, whoever invented the shoe:

cradled the sole, mantled these whales—  

& wrapped, with leather or cloth, my heels.

The swaddled parts with loose-about toes       

run happy over earth. The weight my feet

bear, the body has said yes to. My nails,

Achilles, even the arch’s arc

transport me daily, safely—like an ark

that, lost-then-found & aground, knells

the news. Good or bad, the lucky feat

of landing. Slower now, I thank what tows

my limbs softly across grass, what heals

the ache when my old tenement wails

each step. ‘Til one day—fly away, shoo!


In the Vicinity Of

A lamb, a few steps from a ewe,

romps the green mandala. It plays

in the clover & petaled forbs it chews.

All the lambs it frolics among

are too young to take in vistas you see.

Too busy being young to wend

into dreams. They can’t plan it.

As your days lope by on this planet,

against your cheek a hard wind

blows in from the reckless sea.

A mountain woman, maybe a Hmong,

knows leathered days, how to choose.

She loves her slope, the one place

that defines her. And what defines you?


Whom to Love

The wood thrush named, in this neighborhood, Singer of Psalms. The wood thrush that once soloed as soprano outside the choir loft at Cypress Swamp Baptist. The wood thrush that ghosts the hour’s silence with a refrain I’ll die humming on a Thursday at noon in a town I’ve never been to. The wood thrush that’s grown into the brown beauty of its breast, that’s seen trouble nobody knows. The wood thrush I listen for every morning with the persistence of a child whose father won’t be home tonight, or tomorrow night either. The wood thrush I’ll hold a wake for, then a funeral, if it’s gone for good like the bullfrog a decade ago. The wood thrush that out-nuances the wind and sets those within earshot to dreaming.

Suddenly the Armadillo

Suddenly the armadillo started

crossing. When it stopped and turned, I swerved,

it stopped again. It looked at me—or no,  

it looked at nothing. I could see

a wash of light, a banded moon—could see

what was coming, it wasn’t beauty.

I can’t tell you how the grinding

entered me, enveloped me. A noise

that shook the dark and shoved into my head

deep and loud catastrophe. Inside me

knots—a bitter, sour shaking.

Large machinery eating something small,

It was I who turned this peaceful drive,

this lull, into a wreck of shattered bones.