LAND BETWEEN THE RIVERS

This country is deceiving.
Mostly flat and fertile, where silos
erupt in perpendiculars
and the ancient glaciers knew
where to stop, weaving
in dark ribbons
the world’s bread-basket.

Yet they’re always moving,
these lives beneath us:
Père Marquette, Pontiac, Joliet,
explorers of the past, Abe Lincoln
on his Wabash barge, bringing
foodstuffs, timber, glass, the sacred
fixtures of a daily pilgrimage
rooted in soil.

I tender a toe, a foot, whole body
in this river never the same:
Our lives drift somewhere never
planned, the banks shift, deeps
and shoals, and these
floods we call catastrophes.

They crisscross us here,
these resolute rivers: Veins
of history, discovery, pollution,
aquifers, all this green life
dappling with the daily wind.

So often we forget the direction
we’re heading: To join others, fertilize,
feed our roots, know the way
through mountains,
the cold heart of stones.

**

HOLOCAUST

It must be nice
to imagine some death
counts more than
the demise of others.

Those who fell faceless
in their own feces or blood
will not be honored
by a ribbon or number
that can be worn. 

My ancestors never
received such anointing.

They starved along railway lines
like weeds in a snowstorm,
thin and reedy
as boned songbirds.

Their ghosts
did not whisper in
documentaries.

I’ll never know
who they are, their names
are unpronounceable.

The sky is indifferent
to clouds already passing.

I say, take a picture,
and burn it.

**

Originally published in Common Ground Review.

DIARY V

How the night becomes
whatever I want—

lilac, leopard, fountain,
poltergeist—

fading
in and out

too late to hide
or find companions

in war or love,
leaves that can be read

for solace
or premonition

Still
as a falling

drop.

Come, darkness,
transformation: Take off

this skin.

** 

Originally published in Connecticut River Review.

RECOVERY

Break into pieces

and the pot will shatter
its shards

wherever the earth
will collect them again,

where all fragments
wither, knowing this soil

of the forgotten

over-trod by generations

who feast on time
as if they had it all to themselves,

the débris of the heart left
for grave-robbers to discover

yet I turn in my hand
this one blue triangle over

that must have graced
someone’s living and now mine

where the absence was

I claim
and declare it

beautiful and incomplete,

hoping for fingers
finally

to clench
all indignities

** 

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