Poetry

Which face to choose?
Start in the left-hand corner—and speak to it
      as if to a flock of birds

Wheat, mostly, to David Davies,
flax to the Owens, every month
a careful list of profit

He is in the open laying something softer down.
Leaves as tokens weigh the ground
And twigs as sextants pull the low sun.

Glancing out from our corner table
across the assisted living facility’s
cafeteria, my mother-in-law
Shirley says, “Why, there are no men here!”