What a Luxury, for Thirty Years

to scooch my numb toes

across a field of cotton

to shelter

under your warm limbs

to wake

from the approaching blade,

the children snatched by strangers,

and pull your roundness

into the trough of my belly

to quell

the steel pan's pounding,

the writhing dance of sponge wings

between my ribs

with your sleep soaked body

to dream

a long line of nights

each ending at ocean's edge,

a gray light,

a rolling over,

the opening of eyes.

Drought Upon Us

We wander from book to theory, from politician to righteous philanthropist. We lope from the weaving of the planets to the growth of our cells in the Petri dish. We are ravenous, throats dry and hacking, searching the nascent wilds of the rain forest, the high-tech dark matter lab. We range, faint of hope and heart, feeble in body and spirit, just like Amos, the prophet, wrote nearly three thousand years ago:

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.

Lord, spare us this lack that is at our heels. Don't take your words away from us. Let us pile them to the roof, stacks running out into our yards, our garages, our parking areas. Let us quench our parched throats and and eat our fill each day. We will get to work with sated hearts and purpose—plotting the data accurately, chronicling appearances of new particles, maybe just getting out of bed, speaking a kind word. Keep our eyes reading and seeing, our ears hearing and understanding. Lay your words deep, deep, sear them upon our hearts, our minds, our lips.

First Mulberry

The first mulberry has dropped.

On the path,

not yet stained by tree blood and seed,

a lone black ant rushes

around the sapphire.

Like Aaron measuring Moses' ascent

into Sinai's mystery,

it hesitates at jewel's edge,

antennae flush 

and scissored jaws flexing,

then hurries away,

forgetting to bow and tip

the trail bright

with essence.

Where We Live

The September sun glances

over her shoulder

at the community building,

the parking lot full of pick-ups

and trailers, one marked across its length,

Full Cry & American Cooner Magazine.

Banners on the fence

announce the weekend event,

but if you see those letters

running dark across this page,

your vision of our village—

nestled in the arms of oak-hickory,

grown on the islands

the ice mass drifted around,

where artists and dairy farmers

resuscitate rural America,

where, (as the tourist video tells it),

the living is easy—

will be shattered.

But perhaps their escape to the page

will make you lean back and laugh,

a roiling belly laugh of desire

to live 
where we

Welcome Coon Hunters.

From a long sleep, I wake.

We guided the '54 Ford Consul off the Wyoming interstate in August, 1977, hauled our zip-together burgundy bags into the sage scrub, and lay down in the cold. We fixed our eyes to the brilliant map just beyond our outstretched arms and fell into sleep.

I wake today, the same man zipped in beside me, and open my eyes. This is what I see.