6-17-2014

Lord knows what birds
those could be,
awake and blown over the yard
in the middle of the night.

Maybe they have all been
asked the same questions,
and like all others
awake to being asked,
are searching for
the edges and the corners.

I'm still working on it.

One day, I might suggest in answer

an ever-rusting
dawn,

Suspended
nights, nighttimes,

and maps;

spread out over garage floors
in lives lived
by and still apart from
and before me;

a grand careen;
rock-boating
harvests
full of saw;

dusk-molten grain;

the paths of whirlwinds lain across
swaying cars;

dreams of
maps as birds,
blown over the backyard
in the middle of the night.

6-4-2014

All those dusks
on the Michigan lot
alongside
the trailer,

alongside

impossible
Sugar Creek,

its ending full of
handfuls
of rimfire;

A certain school year;

A stack of Easters
coming again
much later
to embarrass
rare colleges,
graduations.

All those certain hours --

Things not earning
having been sharpened,
kept;

Things not earning
catching the blind,
stammering stolen wages atop
watery spider legs
ambling
long grass,
early summer.

All that grace,
And yet.

Herons

Herons, that find
the shallowest of waters

where the moon rises,
owl-faced,

while the ocean
is most of the world,

lever
delicate sight toward
the lonesome, ever undergoing
horizon.