Poetry

This rain, which falls so lovingly not too hard, not too soft, on leaves and grass and on itself in puddles, should fall on my beloved sister, whose dry forests are in flame.

We say "He" without a name to speak of you, hear our own sounds echoed back from far away in the monitor's shush and fuzz.

There is a resolute black seatbelt. The thin aluminum rail clicks to a close.

3:00 am Christmas, and your newly divorced neighbor's trying to screw together the last wall of a doll house for the four-year-old she's finally coaxed into sleep.

Ready to swallow the fallen, the sea swells. "The waters want me," Jonah cries, running, running, always running away.

I promise not to miss this gift—helleborus—poisonous kin of buttercups that bloom all year.

From this window seat sweet puffs of white disguise irregular quadrilaterals, webs of roofs and roads to make our countryside serene.

For this icy, rain assaulting the bedroom window, let me be truly thankful.

In the small hours, you drift along on your raft of felled palms, weightless between black fathoms above and below.