Ovid, Varro, Virgil, Horace, The Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493

Poesy, please lead us not astray
    But to us, for all time
Whether we are wrong or right
    descants left behind
Meta-morphs in plain sight
    mellow on the vine
Woven trials and tragedies
    temper our pattern ryhme
Verse letters, chats, witty attacks
    salves of twinkling lives
Poems weigh these more, with grace galore
    for the sieves are human-kind

Just so this rain hushes down into a culvert
that drains forty acres of Ft. Mitchell. 

Sixty-seven years ago a similar sounding rain
swept over West Eighteenth Street
into the storm sewer of the alley above 
my grandma’s yard.  Dolores and I
put on plastic raincoats and rubber boots
and jumped in gutter puddles.  

That rain was on its way to Willow Run,
the creek Euclid Avenue and all its houses
had been built over regardless.  So
any significant flood invariably backed up
into everybody’s basement. 

Dad, Mom and Uncle Henry would get out
old coal shovels, and heave most of the mud
out cellar windows into Mosers’ driveway.

Archibald Moore
is a mushroom today.
His fruiting body
lifts from the grave,

while beneath the dirt,
he stretches a web,
weaves all that is living
with all that is dead.

My paternal cousin and I were born October
1952, 12 days apart. There’s an ongoing joke  

between us about the christening gown
passed down to female kin. When it came time  

for her baptism, her mother said
my mom didn’t relinquish it.   

I love when my cousin retells this story
every year on her or my birthday.  

We laugh, reimagine what happened
to the gown passed down through 5 daughters  

in my dad’s family of origin, and many cousins
born before us—Dad the second youngest of 10 siblings.  

Both our mothers gone now, hers 19 years ago,
mine 6. So many things we long to ask them—  

questions we never thought to voice
when they still drew breath.   

Still one to one, I am
frozen inside the world 
of the poem. I desire
to make sense to the reader, yet
I am better off tucked behind
the trees in this forest. Build me
a ladder, would you? I’ll climb out
of this mess, freed
from the “bondage of self”
repeated in the Third
Step prayer. Never mind
if you are not privy, dear
reader, to the chill of folding
metal chairs in church
basements. We all descend
alone before we join a circle.

Snap.
The app—immediate—knows.
You are a prick-madam.
In which plant shop did I discover you?

This lens, it also detects
when you decline, charts your symptoms: 
too much water, too much stress.
Oh, what a wet month!

The screen warns you fit a profile:
difficult to care for.
Only recommended
for those ready for challenge
and greater commitment.

But you are tough.
You do not need daily sun—
only to absorb the wealth
of Mother Earth’s dark soil.
Share nutrients with your neighbors.
Soak it all up.

Today marks fifteen days.
Fifteen more to go
until your roots take hold.

to set the world on fire—
I just want
to strike a match
across my mouth
and blow a spiral of fire
directly above your head
that takes the shape
of a brass key
only you know how
to turn in my chest
without burning
so that my fuel
can escape
and catch a spark
and fly into the night
like a phoenix
and write our initials
over Scorpio’s tail.

but the stars are winking out

and the wind blows hard

And clouds, clouds, clouds

rise up from the hilltops

like puff-headed Godzillas

and I keep going to the store

to buy something I remember

I need and then go home to see

I’ve forgotten the soft dog food

so when I go out again to wander

in my rootless daze back and forth 

toward my husband’s hospice

bed, I will fold a little note

in the top of my purse

that says “dogfood and envelopes”

which I will carry home after my visit

to realize I only have one can left

of cat food which means the store

again only this time the one

next door to the wine shop

the wine shop, the wine shop…

Where Marrowbone winds through the mountain’s side,
Like an old hymn soft on the breeze,
The creek keeps time with the years gone by,
Beneath sycamores and trees.

The fog rolls low through the morning light,
Till the ridges awaken in gold,
And every stone on the worn-out road
Has a hundred stories told.

There were men with faces black as night,
Coming home from the coal beneath,
Their laughter rose through the supper smoke,
Though dust still clung to their teeth.

The whistle sang from the tipple high,
Calling daylight into toil,
While mothers prayed on weathered porches
For sons beneath the soil.

Old churches stand where the valleys bend,
White steeples against the sky,
Where voices gather on Sunday morn,
And old amens never die.

The songs they sang still haunt these hills,
Though the pews have grown more spare;
For faith, like laurel upon the ridge,
Still blossoms everywhere.

The mines grew quiet, the rails grew cold,
And many a child moved west,
Searching cities for steadier pay,
Leaving home inside their chest.

Yet every autumn the maples blaze,
Like fires no rain can drown,
Calling wandering hearts back home
To little Marrowbone town.

For mountains measure a richer wealth
Than dollars ever could own;
They count in memories, kinfolk’s names,
And fields where the seeds were sown.

So long as the creek keeps carving stone,
And whippoorwills still sing,
Marrowbone will live in the souls of those
Who call these hills their spring.

Though the world may pass it by in haste,
And strangers never know,
There’s a kingdom tucked between these ridges
Where mountain people grow.

And if one day these hills should ask
What legacy we’ve shown,
May they whisper gently through the pines:

“They loved this place called Marrowbone.”