A is for almost, arriving, my father’s death. / B is for bear, which he does and does not do. / C is for care and critics and leaving them to their caskets.
I think I lost the genetic lottery, / my cousin told me // in one of the last conversations / we had
that color is not color. The red flower, / she tells me, absorbs all light / but red, so reflects red / where she and I can see it.
Some mornings, I come to on the floor, / my neck burned with moon tracks
Like an ermine looping through the snow, mouth a pink line, / I’m suited for my habitat.
Here’s a lesson: If you leave a hole in the forest, / leave a mouth open in pain, astonishment or grief, / something will come to fill it
Admit it. This is how you want me, slick where desired, / rough where requested.
I remember watching my mother / with the horses, the cool, fluid / way she’d guide those enormous / bodies around the long field
Who doesn’t like a bit of flash, / a pop of red / like a nosebleed
At the cabin in Snug Hollow near McSwain Branch creek, just spring, all the animals are out, and my beloved and I are lying in bed in a soft silence.
