Cutting

I’ve taken cuttings of roses
and grown them
into ravishing bushes.

It seemed a simple thing
but took constant attention,
adoption of the flower
into myself.

It bit my hands; bloomed wildly
fed on my blood.

Life is like this—
constantly feeding.

I’ve been forced
to disinherit my children,
send them into winter.
If I had not
they would have bled me
dry.

**

Ice To Water

The hospital room is cool.
There are moths in your breath.

Circled in ice, you’re enwrapped in white fire.
Coffee-colored urine drains in a bag.

I swab your lips with lemon glycerin.
Your pulse beeps loss. I buzz a nurse out of the void.

I cannot watch you die.
The doctor scowls at my cowardliness.

Stunted from birth, plucked too early—
You were wingless.

It took me years to believe it wasn’t my fault
you despaired in an infant’s life.

I choose blue for the burial
like the thunderhead in your eyes.

The undertaker powders the fine
hairs of your face, seals you in secret.

**

Rain
for N.C.D.

Our need relents—mouths
fill with sweetness.
Skin silvers.

Wet grass upholds
the stars we walk upon.
We wash our cheeks,
sifting hair with wet hands.

Through the heavy night
we sleep; dream thunder.

**

Remembering

Bicycling the river road,
we topped the man-made hill,
shoveled there to brace
water, and coasted down.

We spun past the horses
kicking wildly as if they too sensed
the shift of earth and sky.

We rode the length of fence
to watch the horses.
The soft sun enflamed the river.

I wanted to wander that land
on their backs a hundred years prior
when the soil was undisturbed,
when the live oaks
stood their ground undiminished.

To ride through gold
grasses of the Louisiana prairie,
flushing meadowlarks and bobwhites
from their ground roosts.

I, on the sorrel mare
and you on the appaloosa,
stunning and speckled-dark
like the becoming sky,
would ride for one hundred years
and never forget.

**

Starving Horses

I see it in the cliffs of bone
at her shoulder and flank,
and in her opaque eyes.

It is late winter and blood-warm
breath clouds in the light
as I load grandfather’s Winchester.

For a week she’ll rot
until the backhoe arrives
under a calligraphic line of trees.

My muscles ache to pull
earth over hoof and hair.

I can’t decide what to uncover,
or hide, of neglect
and early frost.

**

The Gift

Here is a vein.
I want you to have it.
It was harvested near bone.

Let oxygen hit it.
Press it hard. Do you hear thunder?
It is filled with it.

I am giving it to you.
Take it.
It is unessential to me now.
I care not what you do—

Leave it
by the roadside to mark
an automobile wreck, a highway exchange.
Give it as change. Press it
between pages as you would a leaf
or a flower given by a lover.

Re-write its history.

**

Second Cup of Coffee During a Rainstorm

This is my mother’s land,
the house in which I was born.

On better days I walk
along paths that my feet
trod when I was growing
into myself.

It is different now.
The trees are small
and bent from blowing rain.

The swirl of cream in my coffee
is a road opening as a mouth.
Lemon curls the edge
of the egg-smooth cup.

I thought of telling you my dream,
as the pre-dawn sky swallowed stars,
but yours was a stranger’s face.

So I said,
Unbutton me.

Will you stay in my bed when I ask?
Leave when I ask?