A bird’s soft, breast-feather driftswith the falling snowand settles on the fresh layer of white.The fine feather-wisps curve upwardlike cupped hands in meditationopen to the

Black flies swarm in the horrid heat,circle the Nuer mother and her two daughterslying in the sub-Saharan dust of Watt.Knobby knees stick out of skeletal

how forgiveness feels:like the game starts over0-0and this time I won’t keep score how forgiveness looks:a stoplight turns from red to greenI walk into the

write a poem, He saysI can feel His hand on mine but I have no poem to writeexcept He opens my mind I wish to

A skein and a gaggle each requiresmore than one bird. When it joinsa group, what will the nomenclaturefor my soul become, when no longerearthbound but

thinks he’s the archangel Gabriel.Nighttime is when such thingscan happen. We permit twilightto linger inside when he talks.That’s not what I heard, I say.It’s what

Five specks in V-formation move in smoothapproach. The sun transmits a flushed alarm,thin flames of tangerine among the crests.The small fleet coasts our way and

After the illness struck,those who lived near enoughgathered to bury the child. The church doors sighed open;the neighbors slippedinto the marbled blue night, all but

A downed oak, toppled by time, pithless logleveled, imploding, rotting edificeunder blown snow; above, warped-and-wovenscene of leafless torsos, sky’s grays threadedthrough like tattered banners attesting