Rise Like a River
My son asks, what do you think about upspeak?
The way a statement is made a question?
Young women today up their downstroke.
What’s so bad, he says, with asking?
If you were my daughter, I tell him,
I’d want you to rise like a river
who doesn’t ask the rock bed
for permission. She rolls, she careens.
After the spring rains, the river rises
and we get out of her way.
If you were my daughter, I’d want you to rise
without asking, spill over your embankments.
And to those who would dam you,
I’d want you to rise higher, to push
your currents against what holds you back
until the day you break free.
If you were my daughter, I’d tell you,
break free. Do not apologize
as you cut through glacier and rock.
You are my son, now a man,
already you know when you speak
the room quiets to hear you.
Son, I want you to learn to listen
like a fly fisherman listens
to the splash of river over rock-
to the pooling and the stilling,
for what lies underneath.
from What We Do (2018)
A Taste of Sweetness
I loved feeding my dying father,
rigging him upright,
cocooning him in pillows
tapping the spoon
soft against his lips, waiting
for his bird mouth to open,
tipping in the dab of lemon pudding.
I tell you, he never coughed once,
not like in the hospital.
But home in the rented bed
in the dining room, I tended him
and my hands knew exactly
how to wipe his mouth,
sponge his teeth with the foam toothette,
chapstick his cracked lips.
The time for words had passed
and my father, who did not speak
to me for years, blinked
as he reached for my hand
raising the spoon to his lips,
his hand I knew
from earliest memory as fist,
as slap, as rasp
as he pulled off his belt.
I fed him, I tell you,
like I fed my own babies,
the answer to my long wondering
what could happen
if fear left the house.
Plum Jam With Wine
If apples get knowledge, plums get memory,
and our tree, which I plum forgot about
dropped her scarlet globes
which I gathered, stewed, added sugar and wine
from grapes of forbearance,
juiced to forgiveness,
cooked slow then poured into jars
like the day we got the call
your father had died
and you spent that long night in his jacket,
in the garage, sawing, cutting,
making a frame for the bevel-cut mirror
from the house on South Bell Street
that he built with his own hands
adding room after room after each child;
the mirror from those years stands
now in our bedroom like the jars
in the pantry holds the seasons,
an offering distilled down to only sweetness.
from What We Do (2018)
How To Be An Optimist
Remember all rocks contain water,
water vibrates, like voice, like memory,
microtubules they call them,
navigation in a bird’s brain,
a wet system of coherence. The boulder
becomes pebble in the mouth of the river
and the pebble remembers.
The nightingale flies across the Sahara
in one flight in order to sing
a singular song his mate will find sexy.
Transience and endurance. How do we do it?
We stack rocks on gravestones: water for the journey.
A symbol of permanence. Remember,
even tree roots talk to each other.
They share nutrients, give warning,
bear witness. This comforts me.
When my nephew died, I imagine the tree
he chose felt that tug, then
the odd suspended weight,
so he did not die alone.
Believe in the flight of the soul.
Sometimes the world is dark.
Remember water. Remember rock.
What We Do
There I was Lord, on my haunches in my garden,
claw-tined trowel in hand, impaling
fat, green slugs like they were Amalekites.
Who doesn’t have blood on their hands?
Me in the dirt raking around the moon faces
of the nasturtium leaves, the curly antenna
of the ruby beets, the tiny banners
of the newly unfurled rainbow chard,
lost in my fiefdom when a doe
nosed her wobbly fawn across the yard.
She paused and we nodded to each other
before they disappeared into the ferns.
Minutes later, the air cracked through the woods,
a neighbor’s firework, and I startled,
jumped to my feet. There she was, alone, no fawn,
behind the hydrangea, staring at me, rapt.
I held her gaze as long as I could.
Lord forgive me. She was a mother,
intent to send out her scent, her child missing.
She did not blink. Gone said her expression.
Like mothers everywhere, she wanted a witness.
I waited but I tired. Like turning off the news.
Changing the channel. I went inside,
closed the door. I washed my hands.
in Atlanta Review
What The Arborist Hears
S’Kallam Indian Reservation
The trees are battleship grey to my colorblind son,
the winter sky same as summer to him, only darker,
more viscous. He feels how the air holds clouds
we can’t yet see, how near the rain is,
how many more hours he has to belay then rappel
from the cathedral height of the cedars and firs
before the dark closes in
and the trees pull into the winter sky.
Like a jockey or long-distance runner,
being small and strong is esteemed for a climber.
He needs to be able to hold on, endure.
He says if there is one thing he has learned
it is to ask the tree for permission first
before the throw of line, held and secured,
before the grip and embrace, the pull
up and into the canopy, that foreign land.
He says the birds announce his arrival there.
He has learned warning from welcome.
Only when a tree has to come down does he wear
his spurs, even then he regrets the tearing.
The birds, he says, have a different song around spurs,
and that time he had to take down the dying old cedar,
known as “Grandfather”, they were silent.
He asked the old cedar before he made the first cut, waited
until the oldest person on the ground gave him the nod.
in Fourth River