Found and Lost

Walking Carli early one morning,
the sidewalk moved a little 
in one small pale spot 

Fallen, the tiny naked body of a newborn squirrel,

wriggling like any baby would, 
lays with a trace of red on one hind leg. 

The mother may never find this missing one if moved.
I hope she is quick. 

The summer sun is coming, and crows patrol these trees. 

Drivers wait in cars to my left,

I imagine each one waits for my verdict.

Cleromancy is deciding this one;

I can’t suckle a newborn anything. 

The light turned green, the drivers released their brakes and we walked on. 

Breakfast

   my morning surprise-
wandering through the berries
  red lips on black bear 

Ghosts

Flowers bleed up
through the dirt,
colored mirrors

not done reflecting.

Old homes and lonely gardens,
not even one stick of wood left

to mark their faithful service.

A crumbled concrete step here or there,
bricks and couples of laundry line posts

left to rust away, feet first.

Random bulbed blossoms
chant old address numbers

over and over to each other

each spring and fall.

This was where you lived

Her Room

Presbyterians and others have drunk toasts
in Monica's old corn-yellow bedroom.
Mom too slept there the first night we moved in;
dad would have howled had he known.

The walls fell and as we changed its spots and stripes.
Now eating breakfast there most mornings,
watching squirrels out side the windows.

We inherited her dreamland
with glass doorknobs and emptied closets.
The room, and we, testified that she awoke
where I now sit drinking my morning coffee.

Seated Then Buried

Headstones mark
the resting places

where the buried Lazboys lie back 

and hold those that had sat 

and only watched for so long

Now each has their own remote control, 

just no reception.

Focused on small dim screens
with pictures that had first went all jagged-like,
followed by the test pattern,

now forever black.

Driggs

West of Driggs, just out of Wyoming's reach
we passed the staggered
chewing fleet of harvesters

Stretched across the wheated hills
The metal locust crawled along
Stripping the stalks of
Golden sunshine, sewed in graceful
Topographic corduroy rows

Woody too, sang of golden hills,
he must have have watched this
show long before

Pyres of dust spiral skyward
Each lumbering machine moved
In synchronized choreography
The hungry small train chugging along
So heavy laden and ready

The Tetons watched, in wait for snow
As another harvest ended

Northwest Light

High above Oregon's mist
lounges a pale orb
coy or maybe just bashful

She lies stretched out on her cloudy davenport
like a lazy slumbering cat

Lolling in the sky
writing love notes and swirls
to rhododendrons and monkey puzzle trees

Hanging there with downcast eyes
knowing her timid glances will go
unreturned until

Raindrops fall through the mist
punching little holes with their
constant whispers of devotion

followed momentarily by tiny threads

of falling light