CONFESSION*

O Earth,
We forget you,
Though our flesh & bones
Are dust & dirt
On loan.
O Earth,
We neglect you,
Though you are
The ground beneath
Our very feet.
O Earth,
We destroy you,
In our plowing
& our mining.
O Earth,
Though we poison you
With toxins,
You still work
With sun & seed & rain,
To fill our mouths with riches
In return.
O Earth,
Forgive us.
When will we learn?

      *commissioned by the Dunedin Story Circle
                                          for Earth Day, 2024

SUMMER SAINT REMY, 1889

Van Gogh began with things that he could see
Through his asylum window at Saint Remy.
He painted clouds that curled in the sky,
Irises that bowed down reverently,
Pale lilac bushes, ivy-covered trees,
And one square patch of flaming, sun-torched wheat.
The earth that he could see between the bars
Afforded him stability.
                                      And soon,
He ventured out to face the olive trees
That whispered ancient words. In his pain,
He painted earth as only he could see,
The gnarled branches and the silver-violet,
Grey-green beauty, captured in the anguish
Of his personal Gethsemane.

 

THORNS AND ACORNS

Who is this man
Who calls Hola, mi vecina!
Every morning,

Who hunts and gathers
Twigs and tiny
Branches in the yard

With his dusty golden
Puppy at his heels?
Who is this man

Who creates a circle
With spindly spoils
On the truck’s hood—

A crown of thorns—
And cries Perfecto!
Who is this man

Armed with broom
And rake against
The acorn enemy?

Who was this man
Before his down-
Turn, before his scar

From ear to crown,
Before he stood
Under Florida oaks,

Wrestling acorns
And English words?
At midnight, he rings

And rings my bell:
Cold, sick, alone,
Crying man-sized tears.

JUNE THE 27TH

It rains throughout the night
Until the early light
Filters through the blinds.

She wakes. The clock reminds
Her of today’s date.
He would be thirty-eight.

In a fog of sad dread,
She eases out of bed.
He’s been gone ten years.

Quietly, she fears
This is the year no one
Will remember her son.

She wanders to her office,
Pulls the sheers and finds this:
An effulgent rainbow

Stretching across the fallow            
Sky. She touches the glass
While the promise lasts.

As it fades away,
Stay. Please, Stay.

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PINK AND RED

She rests her nose on the windowpane
And fogs the glass. She is three or four.

The snow falls all around like sheets of linen
On the line in spring. The buckeye’s branches

And the walk to the house next door are white.
The neighbor’s cat is nowhere to be seen,

The baby-sitter sits in the worn brown chair
To watch The Days of our Lives and softly cries.

Her mother works all day. Her father,
All night. Her hours pass in black and white.

Who will come for her today? Aunt Betty,
Mrs. Shaffer, Aunt Jenny? She never knows.

On the radiator in the kitchen,
A covered bowl of bread dough breathes and rises,

Spilling the workday scent of heat and yeast.
Moving through the blizzard’s milky light,

The grand sum of all the lonesome colors.
What’s that splash of red?

The doorbell rings. Her Daddy’s voice:
“Does my Kitten need a ride back home?”

Daddy, pulling a brand-new PF Flyer!
The sitter stuffs her in a stiff, pink snowsuit.

They make tracks inside this globe of snow.
Through the whirl, he pulls her, pink and red, back home.

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IMPASTO: 
    READING VAN GOGH'S LETTERS AT SEA

Compared to this resplendent crash of color,
the sky is dusty ash. Who knows how many
hues God used to wash sea water blue?
I watch waves surge and shrink and catch the sun
as our ship cuts through the Caribbean.
Van Gogh devoted hours, days, his life,
to study color so that he could paint
the picture that was always on his mind,
the starry night, richer, he believed,
than day’s sunlight. With diverse tints, he shaped
a shade of hope around the moon and stars.
If he were here, which brushstrokes and which hues
would Van Gogh choose to paint these thronging
waves, the color of my deepest longing?

LOT'S WIFE

An angel drags her by the hand and warns:
         Don’t look back.
But she, a woman with no voice or name,
Stops mid-flight and tilts her chin.
        Just one glance
She tells herself as her tears run and sting,
Evaporating.
                      She staggers at the sight.
A fire-storm rains on fields and flocks,
Neighbors and progeny.
Her blood and bones, her skirt,
Her heart, right there, right then,
Turn to salt-encrusted stone.

Now a pillar stands, south of the Dead Sea,
A mineral reminder of a woman
Looking back to see
The life she wrongly loved
And couldn’t rightly let go of.

FOR HENRY, WHO DISLIKES THE MOON

When Papa and Dada say, “Henry, it’s time,”
When the afternoon sun has run out of its shine,

When the trucks are so tired they’ve fallen sleep,
When you have been tucked beneath blanket and sheet,

You’re never alone, though day’s at an end,
Take heart, Little Man, the Moon is your friend.

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