Three poems

On Windy October Nights

On windy October nights

Composers refrain from

Rising blue-green crescendos.

They lay aside bright sound-shapes

Of water chasing itself to the sea,

Or thousand-voice choirs

In sunny meadows.

On the dark side of equinox

Flutes rest, and strings voice only

Cold wind on fence wire.

Now comes the percussionist:

Dry bones clacking in treetops,

Beggars’ fingers tugging at heaven

For one more day.

Forgotten fields shush in thrashing wind

Like sea waves returning to shore alone

To empty a widow’s heart of any hope

In spring’s return.

This is the music of los Muertos

Played with cold hands against

The breath-thin veil between worlds,

Tracing lost faces in shadow.

Rainbow Green Blessings

The skinny young woman on the bus

is talking softly on her phone.

She speaks in tones

that only foreshadow words,

whole notes of vaguely musical breath.

It is right to call her skinny.

Shoulder bones hold her jacket up

like slacking tent poles.

Something inside shies away from

skin and sinks toward a

vanishing point in her belly,

near her waiting womb.

There is still a trace of little girl left

in the way honeyed hair strays

from the clip at the back of her head—

faintly bright with weary exuberance.

Her hand wanders upward to

lazily tame it.

She sits with her legs drawn up and in,

the toes of her shoes

her only contact with the ground,

as if the world were covered in water

far too cold for a deep plunge.

I want to take her home,

to feed her a meal of handmade hope

then recline for hours by the fire

playing Go Fish, laughing and

pointing to the schools of

rainbow green blessings

darting around us still.

Fallen

I know a man who thinks

Life is hard.

It is a hook he swallowed 

In school and now

He can't remember

What the still water 

Tastes like under roots

Near the lazy bank.

All day and all night he faces into

The swiftest current and feels

Sharp rocks on his belly,

Afraid to move, afraid to turn

And look into the black mouth

Behind him.

Life is hard, he thinks,

A prison of solitude and lack,

All fallen, man and earth.

Nearby, a fawn steps with reed legs

Into the singing river,

Lowers her head

And drinks.