From my mother blue eyeswatching from the fringeslike a rabbit in long grass From my father thin browsraised & veering with dreams& schemes From my

Once I believed in You,still do,though belief is often evasive, often abstract,like air, which itself defies graspyet needy lungs clutch at it with the certaintythat

quick breath, heart beat, clock strike: each metronometick-tocks past paths that arch like R’s bowl, backby another route, by the crook’s call home:a lost and

The cancer shot through Earl like a rainbowand left a crook in his arm, just right to lift upthe grandchild he’d never held before. With

—after Ellen Bass I could build him a barn, a big one,as wide as the sky, red, to show my loveand to confess I share

If when the end has ended & allthat’s been running down begins to rewinduntil each beginning has once more begunimaginethe mountains grown taller more jaggedthe

I was 7 and riding the school bus hometo the trailer we lived in back then.My chubby, right cheek was pressed against the cool glass window when a

From the falling formof an intricate vase,water was freed,each flowing cluster and dropa complexity of light,color and motionspilling excitedly through the airamidst one vivid yellow

I can only wonderat this blurredwhir of evidence, cloudedin the blue fanof a thousandwings. I wantto feeltheir million beatsper second on my beardand lashes,reelfrom each

When God wanted to speak,God’s mountain goat jawbone locked shut,so God leapt silentlyrock to rock, appearing at timesto sidle up a sheer vertical cliff. A

Batter my boat Wide-spread Watermake your breakers shake my hull& threaten to capsize me Pushmy bow & blow me back attack me broadside with yourwhipping

1. Everything that rises must converge;or rocket in reverse. I ruminate, lifting fallen coleslaw.By this very retrieval I learn an equal, alternative law:All that descends