few days later, the carcass was covered
in vultures. My friend hoped they’d pick it
to bones, didn’t want her kids to know
that like Cain, they’d taken an innocent life.
(The brood was gone without blood
or feathers. Only a hawk could have
accomplished such a thing.)
But the vultures left the dead alone;
apparently hog cholera’s easier to digest
than swollen possum. Husband away at school,
my friend mowed circles around it for weeks.
Maybe next year they’ll try an orchard, a garden.
Their apples won’t be scabby, get crown gall
or fire blight, and the cherry tomatoes—
God they’ll be small and red
and we’ll pop them into our mouths
like atomic fire balls, seeds and juice
exploding, mushroom clouds rising
as we watch the sun go down in the country.
Early Summer Prayer
The gray bobbed woman
calls common loons
with her hands at the bonfire,
lips pressed to thumbs.
Fingers open, close,
up and down like a kestrel’s tail
or blue fan in the relief
at the lower northern portico
of Hatshepsut’s temple.
In a boat the queen fishes,
fowls in kilt and crown
for as long as the colors
hold true or until the usurper
erases her inscriptions.
Like the first female pharaoh,
the gray woman would like
to remove the feminine “t”
from the end of her name
or float into some tundra pond,
evicting territorial owners.
Instead she’ll moan
as smoke and early summer
ascend like red granite obelisks,
each rich yodel a prayer
the pair will mate for life.
Lock 18
A flaming sword would block the perimeters
of our hometown and unlike the first couple,
we couldn’t have been more corybantic.
Summers, constructing clay diyas we’d one day
fill with oil, light, and let loose on the Ganges
or any river wider than the Mohawk.
Winters, recreating silent films in the attic;
if our lives were black and white, at least
lips and violins, muted gestures, leitmotif.
You followed these dreams. Traveled, studied,
saw clearly the forces that shape the universe.
Or maybe nothing so Faustian, but you got out.
I broke covenant, stayed in the Valley:
waited tables, folded negligees. I learned
first names, favorite drinks, tastes in underthings.
The hills became sacrosanct with their cornflowers
and seasonal roads, during thunderstorms, coruscating.
At some point I stopped wishing for something else.
Kukicha
Twig tea. I sip you and I’m wild again,
bringing my master gifts.
I read that you’re brewed in Liji,
just south of Kyoto,
from discarded stems, stalks,
leftovers from more rife greens;
that you’re not a “true” tea.
This makes me sad.
How can anything so woody,
so vegetal emerge from waste,
have secrets to hide?
Clearly you come from the land
of higuma, the Hokkaido brown bear.
I’m in need of a near-death experience;
I will drink.
I’ll put my trust in records,
since 1962: 86 attacks and 33 passings.
Steaming earth aromas.
I inhaled them while pregnant
and found myself singing
the song of a creek bed.
Brook trout so brown, like home,
one modest female mallard
swimming away from the bridge
with her mate, and yellow celandine—
blossoms I’ve known since childhood
which, if you rip the stem,
drip with nitid paint.
