Poetry

I thought I was lucky
impervious but salt eats
away at everything eventually and

the sandstone bluffs collapse and
twenty-nine is a landslide after heavy
rain

 a total loss the cliff 

can’t rebuild but it can erode
into something
new like the sand
I am breaking

away from the rock
I was cut from

Snowfall’s white descent is piling up, uninterrupted,
in layers of soft milk-chalk, as if this is its burdensome
intent, to lay rule over a silenced city.

Snowflake: not the modern fragile sense, but as perfect
crystallization, the sum of every shade of color,
each one as wholly unique.

Children on the PS 118 playground know this,
know that snow is an invitation, a communal call
that bestows no rules.

A snowman gets built, rolled through dirt and debris,
patted down with wet and snot-smeared mittens.
His dirty, rock-coal eyes wink to their delight;

a smile of stones follows. A child pulls a button
from her thrift-store coat, offering what she can
to make things whole.

the lamp is my new favorite
it’s brass
and the whole thing gets hot when it’s been on awhile
and the lights bend and move
and it’s perfect next to the pull out bed by the fireplace

and it reminds me of the ones
in my grandparents’ house in hendersonville
where squirrels come to the porch for walnuts
where sometimes, reading in the green chair,
you can see a black bear roaming
where my sister and I used to sprint
without abandon down the golf course hill
in our swim suits while the sprinklers ran

back when catching fireflies in jars
and looking for frogs with flashlights after dark
was enough
I found one that still had a tail, once
not a tadpole, but not fully a frog

caught between one thing
and the other.

She jogs the empty corner of the shopping center lot,
where barberries catch the dead leaves.

The wind fills her Buzz Lightyear coat,
thrashing and dingy at the elbow.

The bus hulks against the wind.
She stops and eyebrows my truck

when I wave her across. She grins like the boy
in the shopping cart I saw an hour ago,

in his own Buzz shirt, grin full of stars
at the galaxy he was discovering,

the world slow as understanding. The woman in the lot
already knows what it means to miss

the bus, to be late, to dare to run in front of a car
when you cannot see the driver, your hair a tangle

in a wind that, outside of any car, only you can feel.
The three-finger wave I give is barely visible

above the steering wheel, a hand
of threat and grace, which she won’t know

without that first step. She jogs the crosswalk, the bus
heaves and hisses, its windows reflecting her arms

and shoulders, her face watching the ground,
where the wind shoves leaves in every direction.

didn’t let him see her

looks well — settled in well

not seeing her — not agitated

only communicating with staff he likes

doesn’t like other residents therefore few activities

some men’s activities

looked well

eating, not depressed

———

busy marking this week