Villanelle

I'm not sure how I am supposed to help her.
Does “doing nothing” mean the same as “kill”?
How should I know? Am I my sister's keeper?

I left for school and now I rarely see her.
I’m still the only one she trusts to tell.
I’m not sure how I am supposed to help her.

If she sinks into medicated slumber,
am I at fault in every bitter pill?
How should I know? Am I my sister’s keeper?

I'm not a mother, therapist or doctor;
I don't know how to make a person well.
I’m not sure how I am supposed to help her.

I couldn't save Jess from the ER either,
I didn't even know that she was ill.
But knowing now, am I my sister’s keeper?

What if Cain didn’t raise his hand to murder
but quietly stood and watched as Abel fell?
I’m not sure how I am supposed to help her.
How should I know? Am I my sister’s keeper?

Villanelle

They toiled all the night.
They did what they could do.
Your smile isn’t right.

Beneath the panicked light
you seemed red white and blue.
They toiled all the night

Eventually you’ll bite
just fine, they say, and chew.
Your smile isn’t right.

There is a strange delight
in forming someone new.
They toiled all the night.

You say, a detail’s trite
I say, they fudged a few:
Your smile isn’t right.

Almost, but not quite,
what did they put askew?
They toiled all the night,
but your smile isn’t right.

2012

Death of the Lavender Fields

Hill Country, Texas, in the summer drought:
Blue-purple pill-like petals dried or greyed
except in rare, spare areas of shade
where others seeking shade are driven out
by lashes of mesquite, arboreal knout.
Beneath the sun’s unsparing chereb-blade
rich colors, lavender corollas, fade
and hillocks bulge and redden as with gout.
Provence, who with its lavish plumes would flout,
repents the perfumed excess of its clade
and wishes prayers for sun had gone unprayed
and burns ecstatic in a dearth of doubt.

Even if rain could come—and well it may—
the fields have crusted with a lacquered shell
to keep the most torrential rain at bay.
And hot and choking folds of dust-wind swell,
bend, coil, and shimmer dully like a snake
where dormant desert impulses awake.



2015

Meditation

today I give thanks
that I am butter-fingered--

that I don’t need to
what I cannot do--

hold anything
inside forever, or find

the answer-- what’s
hoarded in the heart’s

fist threatens
to destroy -- even truth,

even love and friends--
so I give thanks for a heart

whose grip’s so weak--
for a world so slippery--

that I am porous
with a mind of mesh,

not marble--and that ends,
not means, evade me--

that my essence is
to breathe, and not

despite my readiness
of hand, to grasp

what’s only passing,
or to understand--

2017

Past Disaster

At midday, drifting

through a barren lot
I stumbled on a static
solar system: rings

of stones. No, rubble,
rough and loveless,
I discovered--
asphalt, concrete, trash.

But flung together
from some past
disaster, they 
petaled open

like a peony
with crabgrass pacing
a labyrinth’s paths
between the clutter.

I’d been passing
through with nothing
on my mind but troubles
and this reminded me

it’s not important
to remember nothing
matters. Detritus,
razed spaces,

these muster miracles
that sense and order
never could have
put together.

2017

Depersonalization

A place of plaster,

warped white shapes
wrinkling into pale
oblivion. Am I

if I am my own
afterthought
festering in a fleece
of fogged sentience?

Surely
there are eyes here
and a tongue. But all
I called identity lies

shredded, paper mache,
flaked glue. Held
together by a bruise
or two.




2017

Medieval Lyric

“Ichot a burde in a bour ase beryl so bryht
As saphyr in selver, semly on syht
He is a faucon in friht, dernest in dale,
Ant with everuch a gome, gladest in gale”*
                                          -Harley MS 2253, Vol. 2 Art. 28


I thought that her name must mean Astral or Esther
        Falling into her orbit as soon as I met her
For she was as fair as the myrtle in summer
        And appeared in my dreams as a flame burning silver

A lady-knight seemingly worthy of Spenser
        “Of amiable grace and of manly tenor”
That wondering way that she laughed when I kissed her!
          I sang with a joy that could echo forever

Her lips were as soft as the lapping of water
          Where Woolwich’s wharves disappear in the river        
Silent and strange and defiantly tender
          I glorified God who had brought us each other

For I was a sparrow a seedling an ember
          And she was a falcon a flower a fire
But now only memory holds us together
      And each day subtracts from what I can remember

------

*I know a lady in a bower as bright as beryl,

As sapphire in silver, lovely to see
She's a falcon in forest, most hidden in valley,

And among everyone, most glad in merriment.