“A lifetime of cozy
When I say
What a beautiful sunrise or
This coffee is amazing, or when
I marvel at the striations
in the bedrock along I-75
or the webs of branches
over our heads at McConnell Springs,
or I say Let’s have pizza tonight
or Let’s read in silence or Let’s do
our taxes or Let’s go to the store
and crash carts into cracker displays,
what I mean is
I have dived head-first into you
and am floating in the fluorescent
electric endless fire you call your heart,
and if you asked me to leave I would,
but I would crumble into a line
of ash shaped like my signature because
there is no sunrise, no pizza, no bedrock
or branches or books that survive
without your breath, and what I would
very much rather do is disintegrate
in here, to dissolve into your neurons,
to defy all physics and open my chest
and welcome you to do the same.
[This is in my WIP collection — The Law of the Spirits: Lexington During Prohibition. A “blind pig” was an establishment for the illegal sale of alcohol, sometimes a business, sometimes a residence.]
Prohibited liquor seized by federal agents
Lexington Herald
The backdoor rattles with cops’ knocks;
our blind pig is exposed.
They come to seize our whiskey.
The predicament unfolds.
There must have been a sneaky snitch
who gleaned a fat reward.
How carefully we sold our booze,
a closely guarded horde.
I grab the bottles, toss the lids,
but find my sink still full.
I pour the whiskey in the froth –
so tragic to befoul.
The agents charge into our home,
they search throughout the house.
I foolishly leave the bottles out –
appalling to my spouse.
They search so hard for evidence,
but find no drops of drink
until the supervisor comes
upon the kitchen sink.
They cluster at my sudsy brew,
all sniffing like bloodhounds.
“It’s in the dirty water, Sam!”
and laughter sounds around.
I was drowning
in that familiar old heaviness,
trying to claw my way up.
Reaching for a surface
that might not exist.
The uncertain, yet familiar darkness.
Fighting to keep the immense heaviness
at bay, if only for a moment longer.
Realizing,
after so much time trapped,
you find the darkness
staring back.
tasmanian devil
whirling in dervish
options available radial
our collision preempted
I identified least fatal pathing,
full sent into your life
illocution illuminates
jagged vertices of heart
healed with much scar tissue
as a dervish must rotate,
she must return to her motion:
tornadoes elsewhere
A reporter interviews a woman who had been
swept off her boat while white water rafting. He
wants to know how it felt to be sucked down into
the whirling water, especially knowing, did she
know four people had died because the melting
snow pack made the water run high? How
did it feel to be so close to danger?
Did she know she might die?
I want to know about the thrill of reaching up
through that white water before the surging
wave dragged her under. Did her heart beat
with wonder at the swirling water before it
pushed her up and over the rocks? Not
was she afraid but was she filled with
wonder? Did she love it? Was
that why she did it?
My mother discovered a baby bird
caught beneath the black tomato net
draped around her blueberry bush.
It stretched yet-weak wings
and found the strength
to somehow fly away,
its mother waiting
with a worm
on the outside.
*** *** ***
I wonder if the chipmunk caught
beneath the same net loosely draped
around my mother’s blueberry bush
died from starvation, dehydration,
or some other less-physical
need,
the soft, tiny shell of its body
cold beneath the heat
of summer sun.
*** *** ***
Does life, and death, and tragedy come
down to who we know
is waiting
on the other side
of a net
loosely draped
over my mother’s fledgling
blueberry bush?
*** *** ***
This morning, another
chipmunk
scampers in the yard.
