FIVE SHORT POEMS

Dew as though delighted
that I am up and out of bed
sane and smiling

Morning diner talk
smell of the highway
church bells in the butter

Dilapidated
basket she left behind
good for only starting a fire

While eating an egg
I watch the dog chewing
the end of its tail off

A cloud imitating a fishless lake
the wash on the line
a thousand breezes old

*

BUFFALO IN SNOW

I find more and more
that I do not like to fly.
But here I sit, on a branch
amongst so much song and
with so much to see, like that
leftover white rice thrown in grass.
Or the wind sweeping across the
back field taking an old wiffle ball
and a blind dragonfly with it.
And in dimming evening light
trees are on their bony knees.
A fish hook is entangled in a cloud
overflowing with rain for the lake.
You say you have never seen the
evening sun leaving a trail of blood.
You say you have never known the
moon to lament the break of day.
I say I have never seen a
single buffalo running in snow.
I’ve never known the dead
to say a friendly hello.

*

FOUR SHORT POEMS

In a dream
about my dead mother
dead leaves are blown from
one end of the Milky Way
to the other

And if in the morning
I cannot find the tracks
of my lover in the sand
I will turn back and follow
my own tracks home

These decaying walls that have clouds
and birds and trees painted on them
sometimes there is the feeling
that these walls are all that history
should consist of

Ah memory
so like the mangy
blind dog gnawing
endlessly on its own
raw paw

Photo credit: Andra Sheinkopf