Fresh cut Timothy
Mahogany sawdust
Sea salt and sweet sweat
Horses, good dirt, sunshine on smooth pine
I Inhale deeply to take you with me.

Someone is threatening to bomb Krogers.  

Oakley
Newport
Bellevuei
Erlanger
Cold Springs
North College Hill
Corryville. 

 No explosions, just employees
and shoppers standing 
in parking lots until bomb squads
found nothing. 

I saw the police cars
fire trucks, ambulances
at my Krogets. the Oakley one. 

Why would anyone blow up
Krogers, where everyone buys
bread and peanut butter and pasta?

Because the greatest terror
id the fear of the ordinary. 

dream two

every time i dream of you
you’re leaving.
in the chaos 
of my sleeping mind 
you’re ready to go

this time you’re in fatigues,
green and brown 
like the earth and grass
you lay on before 
you went to sleep.

you held a duffel bag
a black burden that looked
heavy as the smothering night.

i’m wearing a dress the color
of a white winter sky,
a blood red scarf
like a severed umbilical cord
tied about my neck

i do not understand
these troubling dreams.

you looked at me
round shouldered, fatigued
(the garment you wore?)

i don’t understand
the symbols in dreams.

was the bag you shouldered
the weight of your addiction?

i don’t get these things
scattered like detritus
in my dreams

i wanted to hold you
before you went away 
a long, strong hug
around your neck,
but you slipped
out of my arms
and went away.

i woke up wondering
if i’ll ever make sense
of the senseless things
that happen in my dreams.

Mama grabbed the trinket from her little girl’s hand
dressed in bright fuschia, cornrow braids framing
her small brown face.

Stern dark eyes bore him down shouting, Not enough!
The child confused , watched his sandals sift through sand
slinking away full of chagrin.

One time I cracked my tooth
Eating Mingua at my desk
Holed up in a little office
Way out in God’s country
Forty miles from anywhere
Then I finished off the bag
Before I considred what I
Had just done to myself 
And if that just ain’t the
Most Kentucky thing you
Ever heard, then I just
Don’t know what is 

Vacation starts in two days
Excitement is building
So is my list of things to pack
A road trip to the mountains
Glad my luggage won’t be weighed

she likes Pad Thai followed with fermented honey and cranberries
would you like to dine with me in the cemetery?
subsequently asking if I liked realms of melancholy to which I responded with “very”
I like meeting someone whom only I can make merry

I asked if she would be in the next dream when I awake from this dream and if she’d come back as a fairy
and if you could also be a stranger again I’d dump more of my thoughts and have less to carry

she has a piano in her room but doesn’t play it and that’s contrary
I don’t categorize her and that makes her more interesting and less ordinary

As I watched you

Lead the way

Across the yard

Past the barn

And the open pasture

To show my girls

The bountiful growth

And hidden treasures

That lay your garden

The sun was setting

Between the hills

You pointed to the snap peas

Plucking one from the vine

For each of us

“A garden snack”

That’s what you called it

Chuckling as you sneakily took a bite

I realized I never got to thank you

For loving me in through the hard spots

When my own mother couldn’t

Here you are again

Loving me and advising me

Through another hard spot

Unbeknownst to you

You’re the kindest woman I’ve ever known

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I never got to tell you

Until now.

we used to gather

around fires

when things were bad

and because we were men

or boys growing into me

we didn’t talk about

what hurt us

anything but what hurt us

sometimes

I wish

I could set a fire

for all of them to see

they could come

out of the dark

at their own time

share one last talk

so I could break the rules

tell them I love them

Lungsick / in the hospital I felt so close / to grace– craving / nicotine. / Lexington looked so full / of trees and I was in this / medical hotel–finally getting / help. Four times a day / I gave my big body / to the nurses / even though I admit / I was ashamed. / I had to do it / to get better. Out / the window / the September sky / was so blue. I could see myself / rejoin the world.