the morning is slipped,
like clay
slicked from rain’s
dreams in your hands,
bringing up water
to shape my skin its dust,
mud, dirt and rock,
your fingers
turn
on morning’s wheel,
pulling new ribs into standing,
your touch of willful, wifely
symmetry
make me a vessel,
a well to hold water
and now a lip
to meet yours

For The Twiglets

A lifetime of trawling cod
from the Gulf of Maine –
a fisherman I knew

Would spray WD-40 on his knees.
Even better than motor oil he said –
and rub it in deep into the joints.

Gotta get some swing
back in the
hinges,

He said.
The body not a door
that closes with age,

But a boom that
sweeps and hauls out
over the waves

Year after year.
Close to the salt
but not of it.

For The Twiglets

Noon on the Hudson, helicopters chopping
at the sky like a deli salad –
a bowl of blue tossed with
joggers and stumblers and strollers,
a tattoo of Sinatra in wisps of clouds
whispering New York New York while
dogs from every nation make their embassy,
the river embossed with the whack whack
wake of ferries propelled from shore to skyline
and back again, spinning through
the turnstile and the man punching your ticket
like a prizefighter, the main event, ringside
at the Garden.

For The Twiglets