• -23

    At the end of my longest day,
    The thrust of guilt,
    A river buried in snow

    The grey of hair and teeth
    Shoes too small
    That can’t, in their abandonment,
    Recall that a footstep
    Is like a breath

    A blonde eye charts the seasons,
    Pins winter to the sky
    With broken backs
    And rising smoke stacks
    A shriveled iris in the ground

    The train weeps on its wheels
    Mouths filled
    With layers of earth,
    Dead crops dance in a dream
    Like people

    There is no you or I
    There is no sun
    Only the land,
    A snow-covered field
    Where last year’s plows are
    Barely visible.

  • oral histories

    in the blue of a crater
    the crater of a lake
    a tree grows for centuries
    whispering the remedy through its leaves
    telling us about who we were
    myth open in our veins
    the quiet, damaged lake
    swims inside of us
    gives us a home in each other
    we are not the keepers of this place
    but we tend our water
    intrinsic act
    with dreams of dragonflies, fish,
    oxygen