take hands
as the night grows dark
and tomorrow remains shrouded in mystery
clinging joints intertwined
in a cartilage embrace
mean more than young love’s last lustful kiss
waste no time in the darkening hour
and reach for thin fingerbone
wrinkled flesh
and crackling blue veins
who knows what tomorrow will hold
so cling to the love of today
Trimming suckers
from tomato plants
near dusk, temperature
down to eighty-eight
sticky, itchy, being
eaten despite a slathering
of Skin so Soft
On a slow dash toward
the shower through
the kitchen a whiff then
a flash of the obvious
What a perfect time
to eat a sinfully ripe
South Carolina peach!
My heart has no lost corners.
No hidden chambers there.
It is a globe stretched full,
without a shield, laid bare.
It holds every soul
on this earth dear.
I wear it on my sleeve
more often than I should,
but I believe it better
broken, than unused.
For grief, it has pumped
two thousand tons of blood.
It has been rash and skipped
its beat, swept me from
my steady feet, ached in anguish,
even shame, stirred
emotions not to name.
But malice has no room
and envy is gone soon,
fickle once, to be sure, oceans
of guilt it has endured.
It has, by love, been lured.
In truth, it cannot be cured.
today’s walk was purposeful
not that they all aren’t
but I wanted to see the bees
painted on a downtown building
so I adjusted my route and headed a block further south
and there they were, new and vibrant and large
I photographed them before heading on my way
past a jazz band, by the church, through the park
wondering, thinking purposefully
asking myself if I might want to adjust my own sails
head another direction
despite feeling better today than I have in weeks, perhaps months
can joy become a regularity
or is it a like an extended family member one rarely sees
a once in a blue moon visitor to spend a holiday with
high times but goodbye before the low
I struggle to admit I am allowed
what if everyday, or if not, most days
could be
more than pacifying myself and appeasement
rather, a reason to rejoice
The dog isn’t even mine,
but he might as well be.
It’s the way he jumps up to say hello
and the way he watches out the window
as I drive away.
He makes his presence known
by chewing on toys so loudly
that I don’t know how I ever lived
with the silence.
The dog doesn’t live with me
and I don’t see him every day.
But any dog that lets me love them
is counted as one of mine.
The low, evening sun lights the length of the ridge
like the broad, woven wick
of one of grandma’s kerosene lamps,
the ones that sit in her house
with the same strange uprightness
and hot, costume jewelry glow
as her resurrection lilies.
Old fuel thick as nectar rests inside
their muggy frosted-glass bases.
The porch bulb comes on
and we’re still shin deep in creek water
trying to coax crawdads
as quick as a trick of the dying light
into plastic cups.
She calls through the aluminum gray screen door
into the aluminum gray evening:
“Best get in,
before ol’ Raw Head n’ Bloody Bones
comes outta the woods fer ya’.”
We are unmoved.
We still have blackberry sugar in our bloodstreams,
drying our limbs tough as brambles,
staining our grins the deepest shade of sunset,
and leaving our tongues tart as backtalk.
What could he possibly do to us, his kin?
