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Poetry

ache index high at the marsh today

one caddisfly larva in its jeweled casedrowns stop all the clocks

sinks millennia into sedimentreminds me of tortured and hanged girl

life isas if    Elizabeth Bishop wrote it,and the poem is on repeat repeat repeat:

loss, a violent form.loss, of violence formed.loss, a violation of form /

meaning

On September 3, 1809, Meriwether Lewis set out for Washington, D.C. Lewis carried his journals with him for delivery to his publisher. He had written his will before attempting suicide on this journey. He was restrained.

I’ve been thinking about things that skip a stepbecause now in late winter the snow does its subliming,jumpstarts to vapor, says to the streams “not today.”

We would talk of what was definedas tangible, rap the table witha knuckle, stroke the cashmere. Sipthe tea. Fathers were not mentioned.Nor how my mother would call meby her sister’s name, suddenly,

                                      A lone green tree standing in ademolished frontier // The sleeping animal huff of ourown pried-open country // Time will not exonerate us

Tiny air bubbles pincushion the glasscatching rainbowsso perfectly full of light’s live handtouching also the hair and beardof the man he has become.

Someday they will askWhat were they thinking?

When the car is hurtlingOff the overpassTowards the riverWhat is the child in the backseatThinkingExcept doors and windows?

i was baptized so many times, my familymust not have understood its action as rebirth.instead: accumulation. each time we broke

I saw you sitting on the roof that night,the stars having descendedFrom their dusty perches to hangLike old dreams from your shirt pocket.

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