Poetry

It thrashes in the oaks and soughs in the elms.
Catches on innocence and soon dismantles that.
Sends children bewildered into life. Childhood

It’s a sunny weekday in May
and I have had a bowl of beef stew
and a cold bottle of beer on the brick patio

  For all the years he worked as a pattern cutter
in the denim sweatshops of Los Angeles,
  my father never spoke of what it was he did.

Height after height of strange mountain scenes,

new words, new ideas in our conversation.

I just left them there holding their breath,
summer dripping from their honeyed
muzzles.