In the darkness of the night,
only this time of year,
a childhood favorite,
the fireflies are here.

Leaving their home,
in darkness, they roam,
with luminous strobing,
to attract one of their own.

So welcome, dear friends,
it’s good to see you again,
as I sit out at night,
surrounded by your light.

fear & shame live 

They’re easily lost
through a hole in your pocket
or, worse, left in your
jeans, mixed in with the laundry,
where a small faith, bleached, might drown.

in the big
white
house a+
cross
the county
line

now i under-
stand
rape is fundamentally
sex-work
    just a bit
extreme

                        4:02 AM yesterday

            I don’t have a remote
            so I must close the door
            manually.

             I duck to avoid the closure
             and then I put the car in reverse
             backing to turn and go out straight,

             In its first quarter, the moon, bright
             above the two masive oaks,
            with a bumper crop of leaves,

The man lay on the blanket by the lake          The woman had entered its cold waters
where grass and black sand led                        beyond the sand into cratered depths
he watched her head and body dip                  she moved through lapping waves
through lapping waves floating                         his gaze was safety and serenity
glances gazes permitted                                      eyes could meet and space silence
their blankets side by side                                  he waited for her to emerge dripping   
she would return safely distant                         her curls relaxed in wet cascades   
safely distant but also bound                             lovely and to be cherished
their promises made it so and lovely               distance promised to ensure
that no touch was needed                                   that no touch was needed

immortal Beau once body-

                          Some believe
poetics don’t exist on paper,
but that such knowledge 

expresses and uncovers
with trust in sixteen gigs
of Apple unified memory,

running over terabytes of solid
state drives through Vermont
approaching a hardware store

to juice machines for a Thermos full 
of coffee beans grown in Jamaica,
but roasted locally by nuns 

that
took a vow
of silence.  

Others
carry a leafy notebook
with which perhaps to begin

on a new subject, a man
nagging our heels
burned and kicked out of comfort,

modified by a participial phrase—-
The Great Beowulf
running down a gangrel creature,

the foul, furry Grendel!
Swift tearing off his arm in blankest verse
in gore we are

alerted to
the roughest art 
of prosody.

Anapest!  Budapest!  On the Danube!  You see?