At the High Street Y
draped over a yoga ball
Cleopatra poses
flutters her eyes at Mark Antony
Family Traditions sugggest that
my great uncle killed the last bear
in the county on Sewell Mountain.
Family tradition suggests that
my great uncle killed the last deer where
Winfrey’s rock wrecked steamboats again
and again on Cumberland river.
The American hero, Sgt. York, who
was my uncle’s uncle in Tennessee,
living near the three forks of Wolf River,
killed the last red wolf to travel through
his farm at the bee tree.
This morning a black bear crossed the
hay field, between rolls of hay,
and a fawn hides in the fencerow,
having no knowledge of family
traditions. I expect some day
a red wolf will make tracks in winter snow.
how to be polite on family vacation: a comprehensive guide
rule 1:
when your grandfather says “you look like a boy”
don’t bother explaining what the term non-binary is.
it’s not in his vocabulary and it never will be.
rule 2:
when your grandmother tells you that you could gain 5-10 pounds.
don’t remind her of the eating disorder you had.
it’s makes her uncomfortable
rule 3:
when your family talks about the “husband” you will someday have.
do not remind them that “wife” is the correct pronunciation.
rule 4:
when your family tells you to bless dinner
you bow your head and pretend to pray.
you don’t dare mention that you were kicked out of your church for who you love.
it’s taboo.
Morning taps my shoulder
Early, sun not in full grin.
Fog wedged between ridges
Shows no will to float or rise.
I stretch to reach the day
Just now its birthing begun
Filled with new promises,
Like a baby’s open smile.
I’ll pick you up before the matinee, and we’ll ride together,
unmasked, eager for that once familiar dark, mother and daughter
sipping sodas, eating popcorn, chomping Goobers, juggling
Raisinets that somehow slip from sticky hands to melt unnoticed
in our laps.
At this point, we don’t much care what we see, though I always
warn against taking me to a horror flick, living alone, needing
to pass through growing fields of corn, slowing at the tracks,
my mind continually fertile with all the miraculous what ifs—
Mothman, Grassman, aliens.
To ease us back, we’ve settled on a Disney flick, hoping for laughs,
that over-the-top ease with which we can tell straight off who’s the
hero, who the villain is, though with the title we already know he’s
a she. Still, it will take a lot to scare us off, eager as we are for
this buttered normalcy.
We hope the fireflies survived a year of shuttered life. No Disney
magic there, just an open door, a flutter in, a cool place to land
on a hot summer day, and the rest, as they say, is history Do others
see them as we do? Quick flickers of light in this daytime dark,
signaling anything and everything is possible.
speep donk bibble
fleek pomp snipple
meesh shonk griffle
sping spong spung
floff spang stuggle
crong spank zuffle
ploof trank mupple
sping spong spung
peef donk plibble
fulonk moof tiffle
spaba moink cufliffle
sping spong spung
sping spong spung
sping spong spung
sping spong spung
meeful yooful dunn
(Bethany Spring Retreat Center, New Haven, Kentucky,
November 2019)
We sit in circles
and ponder the significance of birds,
the red-tailed hawk riding the sky above the old farmhouse,
the bobwhites with their two-tone call
that Brother Paul now hears so rarely,
the great firebird spreading its ashen wings
just above the west horizon that first early evening,
reflected in the dregs of the drained lake.
We’re the last band of seekers in this place,
the house sold off to the distillery next door
as a bed & breakfast with no meditation room,
no portraits of Jesus or Merton or Buddha.
The air thick with benediction,
we embrace our fate as punctuating spirits
completing a circle, the last in a line of poets and pilgrims
that goes back half a century.
Some of us are young, sprinting down the shaded lane
or giggling with our Berea classmates late at night.
At least one of us wonders if this climb upstairs on a bad knee
might be his last in this world.
Still there’s time to consider the meaning of trees—
from the benefits of shinrin-yoku or forest bathing
to the silver poplar shedding its nightgown in the yard,
and down the road this autumn afternoon
the great sycamore at the Abbey of Gethsemani,
its naked torso the color of bones, its outstretched arms
sheltering us as we lie on the dying grass,
its fingertips testing the wind.
Back at the house we attune ourselves to the quiet.
Sounds that might have been lost in the cities we came from
reach us here: the distant cock crow
announcing one more morning,
the low toll of the Vespers bell
that rolls down the hill and lodges in our spines,
and the long high chime with which we close our final circle,
reverberating in the thin space between this world and the next.
(for Libby Falk Jones)
When the girls bring up your names
Do we take our diseases
to heaven with us?
Do they hitchhike through the Pearly
Gates in metaphysical bodies?
I know what preachers say
but if we can achieve
eternal life
maybe herpes can too
Or at least chicken pox
There we’ll be, sitting
on the cloud looking
at our lost photos
and suddenly realize
we have the SHINGLES
finally cool enough
to turn off the bedroom fan
and I hear
nothing
an occasional bird call
soft foot steps of an artist passing by
and in between
vehicle vibrates a cattle grate
off in the distance
bee buzzes by
occasional casita door squeaks
open/shut
cars roll by out on highway 84
rare plane overhead
the nothing I hear
is usually the city filling
in all the nothing spaces
I want
to take
desert nothing
home
