bagels singing a line
from last night’s by the river of babylon
as he walks out
the back screen door
_______
garlic sprout sighting
strong short green spears
bursting up through
layer of last fall’s mulch
_______
box elder i tell mica
who points to clusters of them
on the whitehouse cinder block foundation
_______
displaced mouse big brown eyes
body still but motion of heartbeat
rocketing through white fur belly
amidst taken-apart plastic flats
in a cart outside
the toolshed
_______
if you woulda asked the fish its name
the first time you caught it
then if you asked the second fish
the same question
you would have been able to tell
if it was the same one
i tell emory as we
walk through the back porch door
_______
sylvan esso’s coffee on repeat
until i learn the words and
their timing while i
unpack books and papers
from boxes
_______
trish and joe walking
amongst silhouette trees
up onto slater’ss hill
sunset-striped sky
a gignatic backdrop
dwarfing their moving bodies
_______
i think i’m grieving i say
under an illumination of
stars just emerging
_______
unnamed phenomenon:
witnessing a representation
from the distant past of
someone in the same body motions
doing the same work as you do
and feeling that depth of connection
across space and time
(example: in a film about kibbutzes
folks bend over either side of a bed in a field
lowering starts into earth
along lines marked by twine
staked in at either bed-end)
_______
the unaggressive singsong way
i’ve learned to say hello
in situations where
addressing someone might startle
them if they don’t see me there as in
this evening, rounding the gravel road curve
on a starwalk
pathcrossing a shadow person
whose face i can’t see but whose
self i know is welcomed
from the water world:
This handout photo received by CARE Australia shows a man running away from high waves caused by Cyclone Pam crashing along the coast in the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila Cyclone-devastated Vanuatu declared a state of emergency as relief agencies scrambled to get help to the remote Pacific nation amid reports entire villages were “blown away” when the monster storm swept through. – voice of america, day in photos
