Sugar to Water

He mixes

nectar

like a bartender

hoping for a big tip

1 to 1

a dozen birds

swarm four holes

vie and zip

tiny addicts

Red

Already overstocked with jam

from last July, we netted the cherry tree

to buy time, deepen its red before harvest,

black plastic threads a woven protection

from wild birds and fat ground squirrels.

Last night I found one of the latter tangled

and stiff in the net—likely killed

by the day’s heat or my curious dog

obsessed with chasing small things—

having failed to safely enter the hole I cut

last week to save a robin who hung

upside down all day, feathered Odin,

one leg extended and stiff, wild eyed,

red breast heaving with fight

and free wings. She clamped

her sharp beak on shaking fingers

and mosquito net sleeves as we toiled,

my thighs and back side already itching

with the onslaught of dusk’s usual pestilence,

for which I took no time to spray,

having just showered off the day’s oils,

on my way to address this tragedy.

You crouched there with me, aiming

the light, twitching, smacking ankles,

eventually admitting I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t

and retreated indoors. Desperate, bunching up

a fist of brand-new net above the bird,

I hacked a hole decisively, exposed

a breach, next week’s gaping, deadly door,

and brought the feathered thing inside.

I cradled her in a red kitchen towel.

You tenderly snipped with shears

fine black threads from the stiff leg,

her claw pointed like God’s finger

away from us, hunched and wincing

against futility, hoping this Hail Mary

was not too late, that blood might circulate,

reanimate the leg. When I released her

at the edge of the drive, she flew low into

the nearby lot of yucca, cactus, piñon, night.

Aloud, I worried she would die. You assured

me there are plenty of birds with bad legs

who survive, though you couldn’t name

one. I did not argue, knowing then you

love me enough to soothe me with half-truths,

hold me, later, in bed, sweating where we

touch, ignore the pulse of fresh, red bites.

Dead Man’s Float

I’m writing a poem because it’s useless.

No money to be made, no publishers to court.

No student cruelty or apathy to stew.

A consequence of Jim Harrison calling to me

from a shelf of Crestone’s free-box.

That’s how it happens. Drive-by book-nappings.

I’m assuming the posture, as his title instructs,

on this first day home from the classroom.

Only two months to heal, put out new shoots

from withered roots. Broke, we begged for a lake.

They gave us a blue plastic kiddie pool.

Here’s my best dead man’s float.

Jim’s black letters serve as seeds. I scrawl

in a book Laurie collaged, faux antiqued pages,

her brush dipped in brown ink and dragged

across scalloped edges, spine bound with string.

My writing is how she reads me, dead as she is,

how she speaks to me, filters through Jim,

fellow Montanan. Huskily, surly, smoke curled.

Sit on the couch, Rachel. Read him, she says.

Float with me. Watch clouds roll in like motherships

over that flat peak, come for you like rain, winter,

instructions for Liberation in the Great Between

whispered in your ear. Notice the warble

of chickens through your walls, the rise and fall

of your dog’s chest. Sip coffee. Uninstall media.

And, for chrissake, stop thinking about teaching.

Rebeccanrachel

From time to time someone will learn my name

at a conference or wedding, shake my hand,

and later, in passing, call me that other famous

Old Testament name, warmly embedded

in a sentence: Rebecca, how long have you taught art?

or, What is your connection to the bride, Rebecca?

I’ll smile, say, It’s Rachel, but it’s ok, and they’ll apologize

until I explain I love to be called my little sister’s name

and often was, as a girl, by work weary parents,

sounding off the litany of four to seven children’s names

depending on which home we were visiting

or living in, until the right one landed on the ears

of the wayward, beloved one. Yes, I say, it’s ok

to call me by her name. I love to hear the song

of it in the air, to remember the years when we were

Rachelnrebecca, to wear it for her, hear it in the flesh

we share as sisters, as if being composed

of mostly the same stuff were enough to live her,

give her an aging body, hard-won love,

the joy and grief of bearing, raising, sparing children

our inheritance, as if by surrogacy, by baptismal proxy,

rising every morning from the water of my bed.

The Great Feast

On the alpine edge of a once inland sea

dried up for five hundred millennia,

humans prayed to personified gods

for a late frost or lucky fluke to stem

the impending mosquito pestilence.

Located by countless echoes

of winter hunger and March longing,

the God of Bats vibrated with love

and spite, spread both dark wings,

unleashed the great feast.

A cloud of blessing ascends from low

shadows. Drop your shovel. Hear it ring.

Run, flail, gnash teeth. Slap the sting.

Witness your garden grow and bats dive

from behind a whining screen.

Reading Vows

I read the RV bed,

the valley

in the mattress

formed by years

of Carla and Julie

rolling to center, sinking

in each other’s arms

anywhere between here

and Michigan.

Sleeping there with Dorell,

house guests,

the night before

their renewal of vows,

we fall into that nest,

make it warm

with our witness.

By morning, thick

with shared heat,

I climb the hill

of the bed’s high edge,

kick off the quilt

to the cool blue sheet,

fall into dreams again.

The tension of clinging

to the ridge, a giant

snoring woman fallen

to earth, my arm an anchor

thrown over a cliff,

is too much work.

I let go, roll down,

his heft a word

my body knows by heart,

our sunken shape

a new memory

in that soft valley

where every shared night

is a vow.

High Desert Love Languages

Piñon want to be in every poem,

reach into all the cracks the weather makes.

To lengthen in any direction we must break

something, we must suck the water

from dry places, like the bee, like the billionaire,

like me, fighting for a viable teaching salary

so I can retire, scoffing at aphorisms

of well-fed western gurus who say

poverty and wealth are states of mind.

I say, states of body passed on in human seed:

working class exhaustion, the learned

love language of poverty—craving

only things that are free. Only three

out of thirty students in this desert valley

raised their hands when asked if they feel

most loved when they receive gifts.

Gifts—reciprocation—make us uneasy.

Praise, another gift, empty in this empty place.

Give me touch. Give me time.

Give me a sink full of clean dishes.

I took the survey and laughed:

how many receptors I have grown,

tiny pores of hands for almost any kind

of love. I only joke that I am needy.

On Rain

It’s raining. The dog

is sad, curled up in the misery

of not walking me.

When it stops, the night

smells of wet pine, so good,

like the dreams of city folk, their soap,

like itself and spring woodsmoke.

On a black road holding a leash,

I sniff my shoulder to see if it is me.

It was kind of the rain to wait

for us to finish weeding,

power tooling, before it fell,

though of course rain falls when it will

with no thought of kindness.

How we love to personify

the earth’s indifference

when it suits our gratitude or ire.

It felt like kindness.

three eighth graders

fourteen and mean

mistake cool for cruelty

their hearts, roots tangled

into knots of fist stunted

by a father’s tight pot

Dragon

You have a soft spot for the boy,

the quiet sophomore boy,

whose arrivals always smell

of second hand smoke

and unwashed sleep beneath

a pilled, black beanie.

You’ve watched him fashion

serpents for years:

a dragon head of clay

glued to spiral wired frame,

skinned with plaster and paint,

suspended from fishing line.

Before that, a clay snake circling

a slab rolled mug, red and green,

always red and green. And now,

a plan for stained glass:

a dragon built of shards

he will grind and foil and weld,

build something dark for light

to shine through. So, when,

on the field trip bus, he sits

across the aisle from you,

coughing, oozing green from nostrils

as he has for many months,

seeking tissues from your purse,

just trying to get his body from home

to school to a building full

of fantastical art, you brace

yourself for the illness to come,

sense it nesting, surrender when it hits:

the cough, the sputtering cough

of a dragon, trying to rise,

to rise again and again

from every cave, this one in you.