THE BURDEN OF GOING FORWARD
​
I have been watching "The French Chef"
on TV while painting my fingernails. But I cannot
be the perfect hostess you expect me to become
when you entertain prospective
clients. You insist

that the time I spend trying to make
polite conversation is very important,
but I am secretly bleeding from within.
Forgive me if I say what I mean

instead of gossiping on the phone. I feel
claustrophobic attending PTA meetings.
I am tired of talking, required to follow
the rules of parliamentary 
procedure and, angry

at our worn-out phrases, I have a mind
to contradict what I hear, embracing
the truth as if examining an unexploded bomb
that has fallen near our house.

Well respected in the community, you coach
a Little League baseball team and volunteer
at the Church. Yet I need to break
the connection, divide the photographs,
the furniture, solicitous

mutual friends, these objects from the past
out of which disappointment has arisen.
They define the boundaries of acceptable
conduct, but I must do what I can
to relinquish them,

because sympathy is an essential ingredient
I seem to be missing, an inclination
of light I need if I hope to recover.
I swing the pendulum of uneasy
counterpoint, seeking balance

when going to therapy twice a week
is barely enough to prevent me from thinking
that everything is my fault, or wishing
that the children did not remind me
so much of you. I accept

the burden of going forward attenuated
by the death of elm trees and the coming
of winter, by planting indoor flowers and trying
a new hairstyle. But when you suggest
that I take an evening class,

perhaps how to fold colored Japanese paper
into the forms of birds and imaginary creatures
with which I can line the countertop,
I decide to enroll

in Auto Mechanics so that I can fix my car
and know when my timing is off, without
depending on the men at the garage to tell me
if my distributor is sending the right
charge to my spark plugs.

The Kit-Cat Review,Volume 2, Number 4, Spring 2000


THE WORLD BEFORE BIRTH 

Once the summer crowds have departed
and the lifeguard stations are removed
for storage, what few joggers who pass me
pretend to be too out of breath
to speak, and I take

my walks in privacy. Surprised
when I find a line of boot prints
in the drifting snow, I think
of the fossilized tracks of an extinct
species, the signs

they leave being effaced by the wind.
Through openings in the ice I can
tell that the sand still forms
ripples on the bottom, no matter
how cold the air becomes

above the surface, and the strident
gulls have been replaced by ravens
flying so closely overhead
I hear their wings whistling
in the silence.

They seem intent upon a destination
that keeps shifting from one
stand of pines to another,
and as I cut across the empty
parking lot

to skirt the picnic tables stacked
in rows, I am also uncertain what it is
I crave. Though my shadow lengthens,
looking back at the lake
through the leafless sumacs

I see a fire that burns through a break
in the clouds. I watch it turn
the gray world suddenly incandescent
and I expect a shape of uncompromising
brightness to appear.

The Larcom Review, Volume One, Issue Two, Fall/Winter 1999


A NIGHT WITHOUT STARS 

There is nothing to deter me but the excuses
I make any day from dawn till closing time,
how I have to work to earn my paycheck,
that I need caffeine to stay alert,
and I wasn't accepted at the college
of my choice.

The shadows of the always soon-to-be restored
buildings in my neighborhood have more
influence than the spaces which reveal
strips of sky overhead, and there is nothing
to stop me from thinking

that the windows across the street catch fire
and smolder with sunlight, offering
an intensity that spills over, except
for how late I am each morning
and how tired I feel

when I return. I discuss business over lunch,
pushing my salad around on its plate,
and I leave the suggested ten percent
for a tip. On the weekend I will play golf
with one of my clients and cheat
to let him win.

I learn slowly and manage to progress,
though something keeps bothering me, such as
a name I cannot remember. Maybe it's not
important. Perhaps I'll feel better
after a good night's sleep.

The Kit-Cat Review,Volume 2, Number 4, Spring 2000


POND DREDGING 

After they brought their bulldozer
and a backhoe to drain the pond
twenty years of fish died among the alders
on the low side of the dam
and the snapping turtle

crawled away without acknowledging
the existence of creatures that lived
to violate the nurturing darkness.
It took a winter's snow-melt to fill
the empty crater back,

double the size of the old pond
but nearly sterile in its clarity, and we
had to wait until midsummer
for the seeds we'd scattered
on the dredged hardpan

to sprout: a mix of meadow grass
and clover from the hardware store
struggling to take hold. The first
frogs of spring floated
belly-up in the water,

though their transparent egg clusters came
flinching to life in the sun and tadpoles
crowded the bottom. Water striders
skimmed the surface,
and at last,

as if they were a sign that our own healing
had begun, a pair of mallards arrived
with ducklings to follow, swimming
in a row between the stalks
of surviving cattail.

The Larcom Review, Volume One, Issue Two, Fall/Winter 1999


FIGURE GROUND

Sandpipers flew between the spruce trees 
and the shore, where tufted strands 
of dune grass held back the sand. The air 
shone clear and cloudless over Fox 
Island, and we stood 

among juniper to watch the birds rise 
in a flock, turning in unison. First 
white and then black above the water, 
they disappeared only to reappear 
as a negative image, 

reversing themselves as they changed 
direction in that instantaneous surge 
of wings shifting back toward the 
mouth of the Kennebec. We learned 
to look for that 

kind of turning which came by surprise, 
with the movement of sandpipers 
between us and the shore, when we 
tried to live as fully in the moment 
and to turn mid-flight. 
​
Earthtones: Twenty Years of Uncommon Nature Writing, Wood Thrush Books, 2005, St. Albans, VT

FALLING IN PLACE

They go up in smoke, spreading out
in all directions from the empty boxcars,
when the police spotlight comes on
to scatter them from their so-called
"free hotel room

with a view of the lake." They burn
but the light fades. They leave the earth
but they don't float away. They spread
the word and its sound is falling
in place, out of order

in the scheme of things, run ragged
from a loose frame. They tilt between
the trashcans and the green dumpsters
of the city, as if they could see a deeper
shade of green,

or some light shining just out of reach, 
when they scour the back lots
of supermarkets and restaurants
to fill their duffel bags. They dig up
heads of lettuce and unfinished meals,
or they sleep half the day

after being awake all night, risking
cans of Sterno to kill their pain,
and they leave a series of chalked outlines
on the streets they cross, thinning out 
until they can't be seen.

For they go to the margin of that page
that says pass through the eye of a needle
and then disappear. Here are the bells
without clappers, and they sing to you
in an unheard key. Here are the crows
which fly out over the lake.

Williwaw, Volume 1, Number 2, Spring 1988

SOUTHBOUND BIRDS 

I save the flowers you throw away
after they turn dry,
and I arrange them

on my kitchen table.
The doctor recommends that I
change my diet
when he listens

to my heart which sounds
like a small, migratory bird
with a broken wing.

I have become a slave
to my grief, expecting sympathy

from complete strangers,
and I live in a room so dark
at night I find it
difficult to breathe.

I mean to say
I awaken in the night

and think I am living
in another city,
or I wish that the snow
would transform

the streets of this city
and I did not dream
about the love I am missing
in a woman's arms.

The Kit-Cat Review,Volume 2, Number 4, Spring 2000

THE WAY OF HEAVEN

He contemplates the patterns of rose
and chrysanthemum beginning
to wear thin at that section
of carpet upon which 
he tends to walk

most frequently. Where fallen petals
cover a surface of indeterminate
depth, and acacia trees
catch the wind, he sees men
with conical hats

which shade their faces emerge
from the threadbare whiteness.
They move closer the less he tries
to keep them in focus, pilgrims
from a far-off country

come to drink from a Holy Well.
Their presence helps to calm him
when he feels uneasy, teaches him
to look for release

when the way becomes narrow, and in the darkest
hour of night they lead him toward
their gleaming city, existing
beyond a range of seemingly
impenetrable mountains.

Commonweal, March 24, 2000