Poetry

Early blue lavender (Munstead) and air cannons over grain fields
(the pheasant, visiting us regularly now, startles in the hedges)

Rosemary flowers like minuscule orchids (and insects see how to go)
Writing at all feels pointless from the moment I think about death

The love we walk around with is a dull / tool—though it hangs from our belts with a rusty grace . . .

Watauga County, North Carolina

Everything comes first from the mind of God, which is the hand of God,
the thinking hand.
Did you want the destruction to take place before the beauty, or after.

This is my lover, but when I cease to love him I will leave him.
This is my lover. For him I am, of an evening, leaf and hymnal.
This is my lover. But when I seize love, certain trees sing off-key.

The gum she bought by the flat. Blue or green,
mixed in her mouth with the brown chaw we found
in its pouch in the drawer, it congealed—

The first of the blots  two piglets kissing a bell.
Second: a bearcub   in love with his own image.
Blood rising like     clouds of troubling ideas—

One moment it is summer, glasses
of white wine in our hands as we hover
around Beverly’s evening primrose bush
awaiting the promised 9:10 p. m. show.

My nephew presses his hands and face to the glass
to see a seal diving into an acrylic sea, an otter
floating on its back, fur damp and ruffled,
face turned to the painted sun. He wants