If I accomplished nothing else today, I planted Nepeta cataria inside the broad mouth of a flowerpot leftover from my grandfather’s passing. I held a ponytail of her sticky locks and considered long the origin of her species, the ancient quality of dirt unearthed with five extra heaves of the shovel, and of Annie Dillard…
This slow Saturday breeze in my brain turned over an old photograph of us on my parent’s roof, Fourth of July. There I was, deep in the crook of your neck, my gentle grin holding the secret of your scent and my eyes the knowledge of our daughter, beneath our bodies, sleeping on that tiny…
The soul is like Jesus Bare feet in both worlds Everything here has one The dirt soul The cow soul The man soul The sea soul The bird soul The world soul I think it’s so we never forget each other The Other One long bridge So time makes sense Especially…
I like to imagine all of us sober tonight Our aching bodies This mundane human throb Delicious, honest to God fatigue After hours at the office Hours of tidying the house or pruning the rose bushes Or moving all my books from the bedroom to the living room to make room for a dresser set…
I can hold my daughter’s compassion in firelight one tiny log at a time make it last her ashes falling into my cup I can hold the weight of the moon in my breath one porcelain eye on my chest make me see her ashes falling into my cup I can hold my soul in…
How much can you swallow before it swallows you back When the empty is heavier than the sky that he held over his head for losing to Zeus to Gods who have no business being Gods I thought about that today going back up the stairs to my office after a particularly shitty phone call…
Dead poets line four walls Fixed eyes, thin skin choking on dust Indignant, gracious Quit looking for me here, they say The best part of living is what you learn alone in the dark when the rest of the world sleeps All the losing and winning Brimming and seeping from pottery shards unearthed in our…
I’ll walk to the cemetery tonight and find you like we did in college when phones were fat with squiggly tails and I always hoped it was you I’d start off up the hill above my dorm soft jeans and sensible shoes loud, blue parka nothing at all in my pockets through ushering pines and…
Isn’t it interesting how other animals don’t seem to feel sorry for themselves? The loss of a child Starvation Bitter cold, brutal heat They simply bow their heads and eat when it’s offered And how we look so hard within domes and people, that which is offered so baldly in the wild I wonder People…
The TV could be on in the other room You’d be on your laptop half interested in everything, nothing Anything but me Our daughter would be somewhere here; absently, greedily eating illusions And I’d be dying quietly, no differently than I am now… Except that now I get to walk the catacomb like a priestess…
Sobriety Poet 