i gave you the keys
to my body, now please take 
it for a long ride 

I grip the wooden handles,

And look out across the team,

In the early frosty morning,

As I watch the rising steam.

I know before the work is done,

My jacket will be replaced,

By a warming sense of accomplishment,

And sweat upon my face.

How many miles will I walk,

In the furrow, six by twelve?

Turning over patient soil,

Inch by inch I delve.

I hear the scraping of the landside,

And gliding of the soil,

I hear the squeak of leather,

And the feel of honest toil.

I know in this new tilled earth,

My daily bread I win,

As I swing around at the fields far edge,

And head them back again.

The team and I connected,

By leather, wood and chain,

Perform this ancient rite of man,

And it’s more than food we gain.

There’s a deep sense of pleasure,

In the feeling of the work,

And a contract between myself and land,

From which I cannot shirk.

I’ve fed the soil, all winter long,

Which now will feed me,

I slice it deep with the coulter knife,

And open it for seed.

I find I’m caught in a cycle of life,

Myself and the land I tend,

I’ve no notion of when it started,

And I cannot see an end.

5 a.m. weekdays, I drive to the YMCA,
water-aerobicize in the pool’s deep end.
Same route each morning, but after
sixteen years of heading out the condo
community’s curved entrance, my heart
races when an oval boulder looms out of inky
black—standing on one end, poised to lunge.
In headlights, striations mirror overlapping
plates of an armadillo’s armor. Not sure
they’re this far north, but heard they’re on the move.  

Another morning, I thought the boulder a large turtle.
Its shell held a rough spot, scar of some trauma.
Giant tortoises can live 200 years, but can’t survive
in Kentucky. Alligator snapping turtles do dwell here.
Did it crawl out of our lake to lay eggs in grass?  

Strange, how our minds work. Even though I know
the boulder’s there, when my headlights flow
over it, I’m still surprised by the memory,
the wonder of what comes at us in the dark.  

I don’t know what love is

I was fed enough as a kid

As I grew, it became more about survival

Only myself behind locks and closed doors

Love at that time was full of conditions

My axis shifted when I fell for you

Love like honey

Sweet on your tongue and sticky on our lips

Love like a flower

Soft to the touch and delicate

Love like glass

Protective, sharp, and transparent

Love like sunshine

Radiant and warms the soul

A love so good, so pure, I don’t know I deserve it

I don’t know what love is

But you’re teaching me everyday

That this is love

beckoned
a gem amongst a terminal urban field   
to a child  wonderland
to it then  destiny unrealized

so far on from here  labyrinthed roads away
I can see
braiding memory to reality  changes narrative
revealing time’s aggrieved journey

but this is about a 
banana seated  rainbow streamered two wheeled  handlebars flung
girl
lanky body wind sung by delight
oh so far from home  it felt

as if an intrepid explorer
in an alien landscape   on mysterious ground   in a tantalizing world
invisible to everything

youthful eyes see the world from the inside
imagine
remind me of awe some

freckle skinned  lean legged sunburn nosed clorine haired
flying free
a spectral panoramic version not yet planed by life’s inevitable timing

squinty eyed just now  I  again
taste the palmed texture of the tree’s bark  its scrape against thighs  along arms inside  raw
experience

climbing  perched against its laiden branches 
these hidden stolen minutes
red juice stained nails  sticky fingertips  pop of swollen pips against bright teeth
fruit full  giving everything away

your soul in its true form
and then
Later
Row 8 seats 9 and 10
Behind a
Wide navy blue column
Sharp angle at the stage
But it’s a radio show
So you tell me it doesn’t
Matter you didn’t tell me
To go for the balcony
At the Ryman, the
Confederate balcony no
Longer, the host notes too,
He notes
Even after the family,
Loose-woven
Delicate listeners,
Who griped
Groused
Bemoaned
  Later
in the newsletter about that
dreadful
opening monologue “fuck”
we didn’t hear because we
dawdled when we dodged
the whole queue
around the block
reassured one another
(a cocktail’s no place to keep
your Kentucky bourbon)
walking nowhere and then
again because of the stained
glass and then again because
of my weird personal timezone,
already left and behind
them left their open
seats which by
Swing Low
Sweet
Chariot
we’d found

I’m a poet, now.
I feel the emotions,
Think about the words,
Put pencil to paper,
Let the form flow.
It’s okay that I erase a lot.

Impatient is my wandering mind
For things that can’t be sped
Washing, drying, tick the clock
I lie awake in bed

For things that can’t be sped
Repeat, repeat, repeat
I lie awake in bed
Thoughts tumbling in my head

Repeat, repeat, repeat
Each morn, each day, each week
Thoughts tumbling in my head
Clothes in the dryer, then to fold on my bed

Each morn, each day, each week
Washing, drying, tick the clock
Clothes and cups and hair
Impatient is my wandering mind