of shells, empty pockets, no meat.
We wonder if it’s right to look for signs,
knowing there’s just one, The Sign of Jonas,
and the only way to wake up on a new shore
is to spend three days in the belly of a whale.
But there are signs: A doorbell that chimes Auld Lang Syne,
garden rife with onions, stray cat asleep on the porch.
Inside, the walls are damask, ceilings high,
and the staircase may lead to a magic wardrobe.
Best of all, there’s room for the piano,
which I will teach our children to play
just as my mother taught me, and I will read to them
the books of my childhood, and pray,
in the spirit of Ma, who, miles from anywhere,
washed muslin and calico as though it mattered.
Flying Cross
The silhouette of a Cooper’s Hawk in flight is sometimes described as a “flying cross.”
—Hawk Mountain, raptor conservation organization
At breakfast, a stentorian crack
against the picture window
and the kids and I are up:
jam-faced, suddenly caffeinated.
A Cooper’s hawk hunches over its prey—
probable relative of the starlings
we shared a house with last fall.
The small bird hangs limp as Jesus
in the accipiter’s mouth
as its breath is squeezed out
a few feet from my bell feeder.
This happened before.
When we first moved, at Payne’s,
British bistro in Gas City, Indiana:
Hawk drives small bird into French doors
as I savor grilled brie with bacon
try to forget, for a moment,
my life in Middle America.
Not that it’s so bad—
this life with starlings.
They find their way in
through four layers of roof,
foramen where filigree pulls away
from dormer, into the attic and down
through century-old pocket doors.
Despite my husband’s best efforts
with foam spray, we can’t seem to
keep nature from waking us up here,
getting into our personal space, dreams.
It stuns us, drives us into the looking glass.
Only then does it mount on wings,
like a flying cross, glide us to heavenly places.
Cardinal Moon
Why a blood moon? Our five-year-old son
as we unroll sleeping bags onto wet grass.
Is it time to talk about the book of Joel—
portents, prophesies, the book of Revelation?
What’s a tetrad? Our ten-year-old daughter
as I explain how Cassiopeia resembles a tornado,
what frightens us most in this Midwestern town.
Is it time to discuss numbers—consecutive
lunar eclipses, sixth seals and surreal dreams?
Why not a cardinal moon? A crabapple moon?
Firebush moon, ladybug moon, red wagon moon?
I relate the Rayleigh scattering of sunlight
through the atmosphere, how the moon
only appears to be red as Taylor Swift’s
“Blank Space” blares from the garage radio.
Where does God live if the cosmos goes on forever?
If the Great Bear is a dipper, Southern Cross an umbrella,
I will lift mine eyes. Chew the moon slowly.
Hear every crunch as I scatter it in fall,
that perfect pomme, as wind dissipates dew
like a doe and her fawns spreading star-like carpels
and seeds or a red-crested bird, flitting monthly
from crescent to beautiful predictable feminine full moon.
Chickens
For Jack and Amy
My friend’s husband is gentle.
He takes sugar ants outdoors in spring,
spends spare time learning chords
to pop songs big the year he was born.
But last summer when their pullets began
to disappear, his anger became fuel
for something else—a source: like uranium
for sun power or fission for energy.
He drowned the possum denning
under their porch; chucked its
bloated body in the back field
where they’d once tried to keep bees.
