Between 6:10 and 6:24 the dream drained like a cup.
But as she unsheathes herself in morning dark, he lingers
as if real, this boy-child burrowed into borrowed warm.
She recalls how a younger self set out at a prance, singing,
but each time as she rounded the curve the gate banged
shut. Whose voice did she erase last night before listening?
Now nothing hammering but the hours. The boy is gone.
She imagines floating across the grass toward barn-smell,
dill makes a dry rain of its seeds. She could pull the sky
close and textured down around her shoulders, but what
a chill shawl it would make. Like bringing miscarriage
into a room. Like finding yourself on the same path again
and there’s that slam, advance echo. Like pain waiting,
already yellow. 6:50. What is there she longs to topple?
Who to wake, what to build? She’ll learn to forgive
the leaf-blower this day and to pray. Bless all who tend
a hurting blossom. And Dear Rash World so far outside
my window, oh fuck, may this third new nub of child live.

From DOGGED HEARTS (Tupelo Press, 2010)

The naturalist says recognition is not seeing; seeing
leaves judgment home, asks questions. Why is grief
a towering cumulus? What are the characteristics
of this or that species of defeat? A doctor who treats

brain injuries watches a woodpecker, asks, why no
head trauma? Learns the tongue serves as shock
absorber and the brain’s not loose like ours. Some
moths disguise themselves as bird shit, bark. Look

at the fish. Look at the fish again. Let’s see if this
works for sanity. Elegance. Choose your abstraction
and observe daily through the seasons, noting change
and pattern. Despair fades to disquiet. Look hard

at humility. Where there’s water, there’s fish, there’s
Osprey. If bitten, determine: by fear or honesty?
Keep calm. Timely administration of the right
serum insures the possibility of recovery. Look again.

From PRAY ME STAY EAGER (Alice James Books, 2018)

She draws crowds or fire. An oak, she towers.
She forewarns, she floors, she’s sieve, she’s oars
—all whirl and brimming—living for the world.
She’s 13, first in her family to say AIDS out loud.
She’s mopping nuclear meltdown at 69. She sun-
screens orphaned elephants’ ears—knows mother
is shade. Thick-armed or reedy, she splits atoms,
invents windshield wipers, white-out. She labors
in the bush the hut the tub the ward. She delivers.
Exponentially. She sisters. She gives us Hospice,
Kevlar, the Mars Rover, the bra. Carriers of water,
keepers of memories or bees. At 10, circumcised,
about to be wed, she spills hot tea in his lap, grows up
to write her memoir from jail—with eyeliner on t.p.
She will not be forbidden the world. Game-changers,
gene-mappers, those who build bridges, who are bridges,
who get the story told. Sharp- or honey-tongued, she
legals, loyals, triages, stops the superhighway. She sings
herself, and everyone. Flecked with paint or pain, knee-
deep in the way out or in. She drives. We women—elected,
reflecting, dissecting, refracting—ignition for the world.

From PRAY ME STAY EAGER (Alice James Books, 2018)
Available as a Broadside