Dear Son,

Greetings and love from away.
Last night we ate ice cream for dinner,
For the second night in a row. Your father is worried
You might think your entire childhood a lie.
Our first ice cream cones came after walking through
A neighborhood of fantastical mushroom houses.
The second round of ice cream came after watching an impromptu parade
Of party barges, one with a paddlewheel,
Packed with (we think) separate wedding parties.
At least we hope the paddlewheel girls
Are nothing to do with the speedboat boys
As one of them fell overboard before they left the bay.
Don’t worry. He didn’t drown. He might not have even felt the cold.
The paddlewheel girls just danced happily endangering no one.
There was another bridal party on a catamaran but no one was dancing.
Give your girl our love and know you always have ours even if
We never let you have ice cream for supper, even on vacation.

Your loving parents

Untitled gray,
A monotomy of a day
Too gray,
A day whose
Newness — in its usually wee
Promising hours
And weather — kept stalling
  within
Indefinite gray
Dim
Drabness yawning a refusal to change…
Until the darker gray of dusk
  Wiped it away
In a heard, but by windows unseen,
Pouring rain.

Small cracks in my chest
open wide once or
maybe seven times a week.
It is not always so bad.
I am a child,
overwhelmed with all of
the hope and despair
of being something
that has never before been.
Something so fragile
and so small.
Darkness will fall and 
I will cry in my nervous way.
I will tremble in my fear.
I will crack and break and be remade
night after night.
Ever the child come morning.
I hope I never grow up.  

In waiting until now,
is that not a decision in itself?

My window is closing.

When it was wide open,
I made no effort to prop it there. 
Now closed, except a sliver,
the effort is almost insurmountable.

I leave it to the universe.

If a little one sneaks through that gap,
they’re mine for eternity.

If it remains empty until closed,
then that’s what’s meant to be. 

this dependency
the movement of others
whims, decisions, what is not immediate for them
     though for me
I grow tired
this despondency
why can’t I choose
      make a way
decide within my own urgency
when will I finally turn
the corner forever
leaving the self serving
behind
sooner than later, I tell myself
why not this season
these days when the sun shines not only bright
yet long

Rain is gone for now, the earth a bright green stretch of ground

Petals peek out above stems bent by relentless showers

Splashes of purples and oranges and yellows spread

Intoxicating smells of fecundity and regeneration

Tree branches are atwitter with interim tenants

Fireflies flash their morse codes of courtship

While cicada choruses sing in synchrony

The night comes alive with noise

A diversity of plants grow non-stop

Climbing vines embed themselves in trees

A clutch of turtle eggs left underground to break

Open on their own accord, releasing their hatchlings

Who escape into the crazy chaos of blooming and growing

Flourshing and producing and maturing in the summer frenzy

Which will continue to warm our hearts even when it comes to an end

Whatever gives you joy
Sense of delight, ignited
Your heart, our spirit, soars

I hike into the cool hues of summer—
the bondy blue of the pond in the midst
of yellowing cornstalks, under the dark
spring green umbrella of oak-hickory
and black walnuts, into a peace
that only exists here. There’s nothing
to be forgiven in the forest. Not even
the foxes for feeding their young
that brother turkey whose sister now
pecks at grandmother grasshopper.
But we humans who peck at one another,
we have all sorts of textures of the law
of our land. We, having moral agency.
Or do we?

In one half turn