Sunday, November 18, 2012

barn owl

barn owl, Tyto alba

the window glass
a quarry unforeseen
the backward fall
to stony ground
silence until found
the snapped neck
throbs like a pulse
between bones

Monday, November 5, 2012

cactus flower


first a fuzzy knob 
swelled from the side of a spiked column
slightly larger week by week
'til suddenly a vertical sprout
& one morning — this

Saturday, November 3, 2012

The Middle


I have been in the middle
for a very long time —

the middle

of writing,
of life,
of being a wife, mother,
grandmother, sister, aunt, cousin, niece,

though my niece-ness soon
enough will come to an end —

Mary in her upper nineties.

I’m in the middle of

cooking chicken ratatouille,
weeding the yard after being away for nearly two weeks,
reading a book by Lyn Hejinian.

It’s not the middle of the year or the month.
Soon it will be noon.
On the first of the month Mike usually cuts my hair.

In the middle of next month
we will have lived in Argentina for a year & a quarter.
During that middle we’ve traveled to Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, & Dominica.

The timer going off means the chicken is half cooked.

Middle as everything

since babe in arms,
since tonsillectomy,
until kindergarten,
until graduation of high school.

Alternately, as mother
after the birth of my first child,
my second, the surprise of pure love,

as surprise when I fell for Mike,
for such a long time now
another middle.

Is the entire length of Zeno’s paradox.

Is softer than I'd like.