Spring

                                          ... standing above the marsh
                  
                                                                          ... watching blackbirds come and go*



                         *spring / and other fairy tales





Painting by Andrea Kowch

Leather Purse

    
                           ... leather purse / gold lock ... strap across my arm

                                                                                     ... like great aunt may I walk the dusty road

                                           ... carrying all the secrets ten years can hold





Photograph: Jason Ross Williams

Sweetgrass

                          ... north of ogallala

                                                      ... I stop to smell the sweetgrass ..... step into infinity

The Bookshop

           ... beyond wrought iron / a bookshop

                                                 ... between geography & history / a slim volume ... my other life

                          ... I trace its worn spine / remember how the story ends

Photograph by Leapfrog1980

Wild Thing

                                                                     ... we danced to Wild Thing all those summers ago

                  ... now you wander the corridors of Memory Care

                                               ... speaking a language only you understand

All Night

                                         ... all night I listen ... the fence line / a Jew's harp of barbed wire

                     ... then

                                ... nothing but the owl

Unwritten Poems

                   
                                                       ... beneath the paperweight / my mother's poems

                           ... she shaped them into loaves of bread

                                                                                      ... fed them to her children

After the Call

                                          ... after the call ... I rise / fry two eggs ... his way / over easy

                  ... sip my coffee / hum his favorite hymn

                                                                             ... taste the dark earth turning

I Saw You Today

                                                   ... I saw you reading a newspaper in a cafe today

                  ... well, I thought it was you

                                                                         ... but it was raining / and it was a long time ago

Last Night's Rain

                                          ... last night's rain ... a Dali clock / tick tocking on dead leaves

               ... the butterfly's memories

                                                                   ... lanterns of daylight








Photograph by Vadim Trunov

Ice Wine

                      
                       ... ice wine in a mason jar / the owl's silence

Snow Geese

                        ... snow geese on the river / blackberry cold dawn







Photograph by Marius Kasteckas

Winter Trees

                          ... through winter trees / the mailman's red jeep





Photograph by Jim Lamb

Crow Speaks

                         
                          ... biting blue sky / crow speaks in tongues

One Crow

                   crow trilogy:

      
                                                    ... one star / one crow

  
                                                                                   ... bitter cold fills the night

Tangerine

    
                                    ... quietly the chasm widens
                           
                    ... I sit in sunlight
                                                                 ... eat this tangerine

Winter Term

                            
                                                              circling stones beneath the bridge

                                                              sunfish

                                                              count the days til summer







The photograph is mine.

Counterpoint

                                     ... counterpoint to the wind / perfectly still ... I listen to the chimes

     ... a crazed monk drunk on moonlight 

                                                                          ... the world called to prayer

Daybreak

                                                                    ... crossing the bridge 
           
                           ... the neighbor's truck rumbles me awake 
                                                                                
                                                                                               ... day breaks on river road




Photograph by Brian Brown

Red Fox Sunrise

                             ... sunrise / on the steps of the abandoned chicken coop a red fox yawns





The photograph is mine.

At the Cave

                ... at the mouth of the cave I remember

                                                                              ... starlight in the hills / fire on rock walls

                                                    
                                        ... silence / bare shoulders touching night air





Photograph by Tiny Malone

In the Sand Hills

         
                                                        ... in the Sand Hills of Nebraska
                           
                   ... Black Angus munch on stubbled grass
                                                                 
                                                                                                        ... I lean into the wind / listen                                
  
                                             ... everything is fiction





The photograph is mine.

In the Winter Pasture

                                   ... in the winter pasture / fresh powder records every movement

        ... fox / coyote / deer

                          ... and this fan of feathers /  turkey angels in the snow





Photograph by Scott Hill

We Had the Weekends

  
                  ... we had the weekends ... pinochle and pot 'til four in the morning

                                  ... plates piled high with deep fried smelt from lake superior ... your easy laugh 

       ... now you're gone ... and I can't lean across the table

                                                 ... kiss your sweet chocolate mouth / tell you that I love you 


                                                                                                                 


Photograph by William Gedney

The Picture

                              ... you take our picture while we're sitting on the steps of our first house

                ... my black corduroy bell bottoms / his horn rimmed glasses

                                                 ... our little boy between us ....... I'll have two more husbands after him

         ... your oldest son / not yet born ... will die in a motorcycle accident

                                         ... it's all there on those front steps / we just can't see it yet






Photograph by William Gedney

Beside the Highway

         ... beside the highway / a field of sunflowers where you took my picture that day 

                   ... the picnic in the cemetery down a narrow dirt road  / quietly crying on the way home 

  ... years spent prying my hands loose when I couldn't let go


                                                                                              



My reading of this poem on public radio:
https://beta.prx.org/stories/166291

Minnesota Nov 16th

                       minnesota nov 16th

                                 beyond the remains of the phlox and peonies the yellow grass lies dormant

                                 I watch from my living room window ... sip my tea
 



Photograph by Diane Varner

Morning on Tsankawi

                                                            ... walking on the bones of the anasazi / listening for stories

                      ... snow falling on the pajarita plateau / light moving across the valley

                                                                                          ... morning on Tsankawi

         

Late November

        ... late november 
           
                ... calling on his great grandfather for a blessing he smoked whitefish in an old refrigerator

... pulled salty flesh from crisp skin

                                    ... the ways of the ancients ... the remembered taste of snow on pine

From My Father's Window

                                                         ... from my father's window

                                   ... a bird feeder in the snow
                                                           
                                                                        ... a grey squirrel stealing seeds
                                                         
                                            ... and all the time that's left






Photograph by Alexei Mikhailov