Garden Confessions

1.
I confess I wasn’t happy to find chickens
in the green beans, leisurely pecking the fruits
of our labor. But surely beans are tastier
than grass, and truly, if Speckled Sussex
eat the beans, and we fry the eggs,
we still get the beans. Better the chickens
and us than damn grasshoppers,
who, I confess, make me anxious
until the chickens eat them,
snatching them from air mid-leap.
So let the chickens in the garden.
Guard the eggplant. Nasturtiums
don’t deter pests as well as beaks.

2.
I must confess: I am a green witch, digging
with fingernails in compost, my silver rings
caked with brown black muck of tomatoes
underbaked with chicken shit in the compost pile.
Motherwort and purple coneflower don’t care;
Calendula eats any rotten thing.
I confess I wonder if some childless Irish mother
perhaps planting seeds to resurrect her child,
once studied granite stones in garden holes she dug.
I wonder if, come mid July, she bent to touch
each perfect plant, sing it a small cicada song,
caress its waxy, tiny or stinging leaves
and walked away, smelling her fingers.

2015

Once upon a Kitchen

Sick in bed, nose full and sore,
I watch him move through
the kitchen. (Every bedroom
door should look upon a kitchen).
Meadowlarks chime through walls.
Windows take his silhouette.
His head bows to morning tasks.
A blender roars. Bottles clink.
Water pours its song over dishes.
He sits by me on the bed
to drink his banana coconut
smoothie. I sip hot tea.
Our eyes exchange soft shining.

2015

Sisters Left

Somehow we laugh.
Of three,
we are the two
sisters left.
Our long curls ring
our mother’s grief,
Christmas-bent
on bruising blue
her knees.
We pray to last.

2015
for Kimmi

Unless I Still

I’m always leaving even as I stay,
I told March wind, mercilessly
Tugging clothes’ loose ends,
Blinding me with hair.

It circled my clenched spine,
Made knees bend and bounce
Impatiently before it said,

The flag of who you think you are
Is always flapping and snapping
Against a dream of some better place.

You are like a dead leaf rattling
On a spring tree, unable to let go
Even while buds are breaking green.

If you let go, this place will fly;
If you hold on, deeper root.
Either way, the chill wind breathed,
You’re mine.

2015

Walking the Pasture

The night we walked
the two-pathed road—the one
you accidentally carved
in the pasture driving buckets
of corn and water drawn warm
from our winter bathtub
back and forth to three pigs
who skip and snort every time
your silver pickup climbs
the gentle hill and stops—
the farm light, as always, took over
where the moon left off.
Clouds crept in from the east.
We smelled but doubted rain.
We smiled but doubted this, our place.
Orion, in his simplicity,
pinpoints of restlessness shining,
hunted the western horizon
without finding it, shoulders lit,
chest filled with night.

2015

The Cross

When enough people die or begin
their descent in January,
walking a dark highway
into other people’s heaven,
or drinking childhood pain
to ashes, it’s enough to break
any woman of poetry.
I grow tired of pouring
my body into words.
It’s embarrassing. Absurd
to think they could hold me
like four urns on a funeral table
that will drive in four directions,
my flesh finally the cross without
the dead Christ metaphor.

2015

Garlic, Darling

I am chopping twice
as much for him.
My mother would recoil.
Enchilada casserole?
Pico de gallo?
Rosemary chicken?
Mole? Lasagna?
You’ll never see
him throw in less than six.
I stuff him full
of crushed cloves,
pickled cloves,
roasted cloves, minced.
We laugh territorially,
swap garlic grins.
What better proof
our breath and mouth
are only for the other’s
nose and lips?
He feeds me what he loves
and I return the service.
What better plan, he says,
to make a vampire sick?
O roaring garlic midnight!
O morning-after-garlic kiss!
Today we are sure
to live forever.

2015

Houses for Each Other

I’ve told any local who feels safe to tell,
These aren’t my people,
Though plains have fed me most my days.

And with the confession I push
Each listener away: You aren’t like me.
And what would anyone say,
Then, to offer comfort?

So I remain without people,
Restless, homeless at home
For over a decade.

My son’s favorite white rapper
Said this morning over bacon, sizzling
Deep inside his grin:
We are houses for each other.

Again I am confronted
With my own arrogant standing above
And apart from good people

Who have lived inside their lives so fully
They blink when I point at water
Where they swim.
Water, I say.

Why point at water?
I row across a great sea of sage
In a minivan every day—empty,

Except for me.
The sky is growing, and space.
I am trying to catch up, let everyone
Live in me. And leave.

2015

A Year after the Abortion

We thought the leghorn
and Greg Brown no longer laid.
Come look, my lover said.
Nestled in wall insulation,
its paper layer pecked
clear through, lay seven eggs,
four brown, three white
in the back of the shed.
Unsure how long they’d been,
though January and February
probably preserved them,
I smashed them in the run
and fed them to their hens,
who do not mind to peck and pinch
their unborn from the dead.

2015

What We Would Do

If the day’s promise were you cannot fail,
I would spend the day with you, son.
If you looked thin, I would prepare
A square meal without nagging you
To better consider your health.
You would not roll your eyes or lift your palms
In defense. You would eat. Everything.
Smiling, thanking me for loving you
With homegrown food. We would howl
At raunchy stand-up comedy, youtube hoot,
Make up our own horrible jokes
About dead babies. I wouldn’t scold you.
If we disagreed, you wouldn’t leave me
In the car, idling. I wouldn’t chase you
Down the dark street, beg you
To get in, come home, sleep where I know
You are safe. On a perfect day, you’d respond
To my texts, or call before bed,
And I wouldn’t think of cancelling your phone.
You would say, “Mom, I don’t blame you for life
Being hard or unfair.” I would say,
“It is only unfair if you imagine it
Some other way,” and you wouldn’t say,
“Stop being so philosophical.
Men don’t talk like that.” And I would say,
“Ok. Teach me how to talk
Like a mother to a man.”
And you would. And I would.

2015