A white-tail deer moons me, 
disappears behind clouds,
and I'm moon walking in the stumble-light
  
Tripping on potholes of moonman craters 
and astronaut seas 
mirrored in puddles
  
It is way past bedtime for stoats and voles,
they watch silent horror films of hawks, 
shadows that flicker on silver screen leaves
  
The taste of time on my tongue, 
my gloves soaked and cold 
from this morning's sleet
  
I trace a line to the Pole star, 
but is my filmy world a negative, I have it all 
backwards? Am I headed South, not North?
  
I walk in light, old and yellow as sticky tape,
peeled from b&w photos 
off the bottom of the sea

The Sunday Muse

Wind
bites through my skin –
white-capped teeth
off winter seas.

Sand whips
and tastes of banishment.
Umbilical prisoner,
I walk bleak Eden.

Rain breaks covenant,
floods, waterboards
my knowledge 
of good and evil. 

The Sunday Muse

This will be about rope.		And so?
Turk’s Head knots
for eyes.		Just because you say “trefoil”
		doesn’t make it true.
Braided X’s.		Like eyes sewn shut. Whipstitch is it?
Coils and splices.		You are spliced to me, yes.
		Coils of smoke. I gave up my Marlboros when you were four.
You are bent in death.		Bend – to join one rope to another. What ties us?
		Our rigging of blood.
	Neither Neither	of us make correct use
of		of
	shroud. shroud.
		Why are these nautical, I was a cowgirl.
Arroyos to the Panhandle
look like the bottom of the sea.
You would have me		You would
	hoist hang
the solstice.		me with the sun.
Blocks and	sheaves to lift Swing me	from the crack of noon.
the dawn.
	Bight, cordage, knot, Bite, pull, thread, lash,
		tangle what is
	living dying	release
me
from you.
		You know you do not mean that.
	Braided Plied	into every strand.

The Sunday Muse

I guess just throw it
on the compost,
this dead swan at the bottom
of the road.
  
So much larger here at my feet –
a dead, feathered cello,
neck bent around to bow
a low moan.
  
It was never white, I can see
it was a living light,
bright silver now brushed with death
to mottled grey. 
  
Prisms of dew 
bead the wings –
tasting flights of fine oil
feeding mites.
  
No prayer 
here.
I roll like a dog
in dead words. 

The Sunday Muse

Winter rain splats like an egg 
in a cold frying pan.
This morning my mind 
is refrigerated, congealed,
a rictus of cheap margarine –
I scoop fat substitute thoughts
with a spatula. They splat in the pan too,
alongside the egg.

Isn't there meant to be
an order to things? Heat 
first, then butter, then egg?
Kitchen mullions rattle
as the Nor'easter tests their strength.
The vacant house across the way –
Is this the year the windows break?
Will it give up the ghost
in a final shiver of broken glass?

Outside in the storm, as with the world,
birds have abandoned flight.
No flying south to depilate winter,
the bikini waxing of dreams –
no tweezing the snow moustache
from elderly Florida swans.
No way to take the hair 
off it all.

You toss me a frozen bagel and laugh –
hardtack or life buoy 
for a morning's survival, 
my shipwrecked words 
wash ashore this deserted island.
The rain slants, cants,
through these old portholes. 

The Sunday Muse

A poem plunged into the sea	I hear you singing
I row to where the words rise	The Water is Wide
moil, roil
in columns	lost in time, escarpments, translation from the Malagasy
The return of the Sargasso Comet
The Salt Meteor	It was hard to tap the sky
	and break through clouds
	quarried of marble
Are your tatters of seaweed
meant for wings?	I am tired of sinking ships and sailors
	I fly the slick and rope of sorrow
And so	And so
Were you ever Icarus?	I’m sorry, no
And so	And so
I return to shore	Your oars are oak and stripling ash
	The forest has no place at sea
I press the ore blades across my chest	I will bring the lightning
Restart my heart	One hundred hundred times
	For this I love you

The Sunday Muse

the Sheep-to-Shore 
phone rings
  
you say ignore 
the elephant in the room
  
during Thanksgiving dinner
its ass-end smell
  
turkey
and gasoline from 
  
the fuming motor
of democracy winching it
  
through the doorway
hoping the walls don't burst
  
then we can just go back
to where we left off 
  
our regular grift and
holding our noses for 
  
Isaiah 53:6 
all we like sheep 

The Sunday Muse

 what is a turbinado
 and how did it get in my coffee?
 this question stirs and 
 then dissolves
  
 my mind needs a mulligan
 just one day that doesn't
 crash test my brain
 and blow out air bags
  
 or leave me punch drunk
 from the rope-a-dope news 
 a la Ali with me praying
 for the bell
  
 can we go back to simpler times?
 like Nixon Vietnam and
 the National Guard opening fire
 on students at Kent State?
  
 OK no bad plan
 Manson no no not that
 either good god no
 '38 and Kristallnacht
  
 gaaah! There's no end!
 Rawanda Cambodia Sri Lanka
 the Armenian Genocide and 
 The Terror of the French Revolution
  
 this is not going well
 my poem not yielding up
 the calm surface of Haiku –
 Old Pond blooms with scum
  
 fine no headlines today
 no nervous sounds of clicking 
 like the tiny claws of squirrels
 scrambling across the shingles
  
 I'll just read about science
 this piece on no my god
 Murder Hornets 
 and they are orange too
  
 like stinging lights 
 behind the eyes
 of a four-year long
 concussion  

The Sunday Muse

the sound this morning's
breaking 
broken light
the blues
made me happysad
because muddy waters
do not baptize 
us holy wholly 
with salvation only
part the red sea
into blue and you
and I sing "Halleluiah" but 
we're lost as heaven knows
Leonard's lonely heart 'cause 
"love is not a victory march"
I don't know how
all our voices
can open the soul
when only the gospel
in bluenotes are sent
on a red letter day 

The Sunday Muse