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!”
Where there were only dirt and needles, I laid a floor of hardwood and shellac. I plaited walls into the forest.
Last century we took a lot of shots Of what we did, framing things for Look and Life So we could see us and our lot
You don’t know the forest of two minds bound by weeds grown from one to the other,
Life’s on the wire; The rest is waiting. I know I’m alive when I
Dawn boils up like milk, cloudy with disrespect. Like Tin Pan Alley hacks, paid for each line, neighborhood wrens bang out their high-pitched notes.
Winter at the end of the trail, where the Columbia washes the ocean, what one book calls The Kingdom of Conifers,
This pain is so familiar (we were all children once) I let it ride my back. I offer it in,
It’s coming to you live: the high-rise ledge That doubles as a desolate precipice In a pinch. It’s all raw footage,
