Poetry

That God first placed an angel
with a flaming sword to guard
Eden’s closed gates, that He gave us
signs to declare a different logic,

In that endless season of dead grass
and rotted pumpkins, I was a boy
who stood in a tree and named all the cows

Leroy, wisdom in a chuckle, 
            Gold chains drape around his neck—
                         High yellow on high yellow—

He walks back from the
                                         window in half-shadow

a half-shade himself

The day moon the
                                     spirit of the morning

The girl seems to fly
the hawk above her, a kite of feathers

Two seats away, my father watched
the tenor study the world that rumbled
parallel to his window: crumbling

The woman saves every heart- or wing-
shaped rock she finds, studding the mountain 

To protect the instrument, she spent all night
gesturing at plates or nodding yes to the glass of white.