Monday, November 20, 2023
Flight
Saturday, November 18, 2023
My Dad Shot a Woodchuck.
You pulled the curtain back on my window,
Opened the glass, and rested your shotgun on the ledge
Before the long shadow of the house had lifted,
Along with the dew, from the back yard.
It was a summer morning. I lay sleeping,
Yet a teenager, needing extra of everything,
When the woodchuck trundled into the garden,
Assuming that we all lay fast asleep, as I did--
Until the violent crack that ended him
And made me wake up mid-scream
To your infectious cackling.
Unable to help myself, I am laughing,
Then and now, remembering how you and I
Were really children at the same time.
Monday, November 13, 2023
Sunday Morning Run
Haunted to the grave by the eternity in our bones.
Friday, November 3, 2023
Outside Loretto Chapel
In the empty spaces between the pale adobe faces
Of buildings, chile ristras drying in bunches in doorways
Lift on the breeze that, on the twisted back of the evening,
Carries an ancient lament across the desert.
After the wedding party, led by a mariachi band
Up a sandstone staircase, falls asleep in white sheets,
The land recalls the rhythms of a thousand forgotten languages
Pressed by weary feet into its surface.
The dry aged hand of the wind with a hundred whistling names (all forgotten) — stops
To remember all the tears it has collected in its palm,
And once a year returns them to those who stop here now,
Strange tongues opening to catch the drops.