“haiku house”
waits at woods edge
my trickster mind
enters the silence 
empty in the rain dark

I feel her ghost
heart…beats
until I whisper
“hello the house”
and she’s gone

her portrait on the wall 
wearing the dead-
hummingbird necklace 
hollow as her eyes
first thing I see

not expecting the ghost but
she’s left me alone
voice of the creek sounding 
like rain or a river
singing to shooting stars 

Plumb Branch, North Carolina 

Befuddled:

A ruby river

            I stand astraddle two extremes:

Behind, the public park is jade and bathed
in late day gold, the sun exhaling
glints and ghosts and writing solar glyphs—
a missive to his consort moon, and sighing

            it’s your turn, Love.  It’s your turn.

Solace spreads her blanket in the green
inviting Solitude to lay him down
in days were days before and now
but days were no more picnic
than today.  I know this need.  I know
that need to nurture some nostalgic child
in noctilucent, narcoleptic sleep.  They touch,
their carnal claws concealed, their incest
giving birth to what-once-was,
to might-have-beens.            

            I can’t go back.  I won’t
                       
            go back.

Ahead, the city council’s played its hand;
five acres stripped of life and broken down
to red-clay-dirt and graveled ground.  It hurts
to see the damage, see the catastrophic drop
and shattered skeleton of earth at hand of man.

             Here, there be dragons.
             
             Here, there be death.

Here lies what could have been, behind a stone—
and still as stone, and ancient bones,
the fields have turned to monuments
of mortality.  Creation cries for consciousness
and peace becomes a conscientious
objection to the war.            

            And yet I turn.  And yet I see

a vision of the coming days, a schema to the mayhem
of a broken-open shell.  Even pearls know they were once
the spit and spite of mollusk fault—those soft and fragile
bodies wrapped in calcium and carbonate—until

             I think of what it means:

There is meat to be eaten.  Opalescent truths
to be seen.  And not for sake of eating, seeing, no—
it’s just the cost.  It’s just the price to be paid.
It’s the way our master works His hand, His earth,
His children for His children’s sake.

             There will be ballparks here.
             There will be freedoms here.

             There will be joy.

What looks for now disorder, disarray,
is but foundation to the coming days.
Rebar reaches to the sky, naked blood
of rust against the blue.  Bedrock
sleeps in mounds awaiting breath.
Dozers, backhoes, cranes sit silent
amid the mess.   Everything is

             potential.

You make me see the beauty.  In my mind,
You are a whisper of dancing images
are blossoming, are flowering, are
opening my eyes to see the people–
stands of people full of laughter
and the smiles upon the faces
of all the ones to come.  All
the ones will come–not to see what
You have built, but be together
in one place, and in one mind, and in
one body.  I see You, Lord.  I hear You
writing that love story, writing that love letter:

             It’s the turn, Love

                        It’s the turn.

1
Let my flesh become
nitrogen-rich soil
to feed miniature oaks,
yes, and lips of lilacs and lilies
and whole quadriceps
of lavender, nipples
of honeysuckle, elbows
of dry mesquite, throat of
roses, palms of holly.

2
I will sing a song through
the thorns on my tongue
and grackles will come,
flutters of shadow and spark.
In my mouth, they will nest,
fuck briefly, and multiply.
My voice will be of multitudes.

3
Put the river around my ankles,
the stars along my hips,
the sun against my back.
I want to serve only
the things that matter.

I gave my cousin my last hug
he was never a hugging man
but that day he hugged like my mom
who he had taken care of for all those years,
he was Jim and I was Jimmy
and in that hug he handed over
all the imperfect roots of our family tree
the smudged lines of what we had come from

On my way out of Paducah
past the formica plant and the river refinery
I took the slow road to Kuttawa and Beaver Dam
crossed the Green at Rockport and on up
through the High Lonesome of the strip mines
that Big Bertha gave us, right on to Leitchfeild,
the last town before I hit the four-lanes
to make serious business of getting home;
sometimes I closed my eyes to see JIm’s breaths
as I imagined them now to be

In that town named for a septic drainage trench
I got lunch at the Farmers Feedmill, being 
the only customer at that oddball hour of two
the waitress sat with me and we talked cousins,
she had loved hers and it was the real deal, not
that something-to-be-made-fun-of-shit.   Then
to celebrate our 250th anniversary she brought out
a little American flag stuck in my cold slaw cup

I sit and wonder
how long  my soul will wander 
looking for it’s final home 
its not here intution tells me so
and when we meet, will I see
you have also been looking for me
In your smile
or perhaps your eyes
something pulls me close
a familiar feeling
a longing
a wish
a simple kiss
and I know 
we will meet again 

wants to rip at my tee-shirt—

scream kaddish with a minyan

of 10 howling ghosts, claw

a nesting place beside

your bed to sit shiva.

Do a mitzvah for each 

and every soul who

covers my quaking

heart with soft

winding 

sheets.

Biting cold floors on bare feet,
the smell of plastic bags,
pushpin skin for an IV drip,
over and over and over.
My life upended.
Finding a place for myself
in a world that suddenly feels
so foreign, so new.
How had I ever lived
in it before?
Was it always this painful?
This frightening?
“How do I do this?”
I ask everyone, anyone.
“I can’t do this,”
I tell my husband, at least twice a day.
“I think I’ll do it anyway,”
I tell myself, swollen belly cradled
in my hands.

Wars starts on Friday
after the markets close 
when the populus is obsessed 
with high school football
-date night
When pundits have taken a break and
politicians have headed home
thinking we won’t notice
-or care