IN 1948

The east-and-westbound trains
rattled our front porch door.
Somebody sang what Momma called
a torch on the radio.  Was it
always Sunday afternoon?
To the horizon the grapevines grew,
the wine purpled in pitch-dark casks,
the freight trains came screaming
and clattered by like something
breaking.  After supper
we walked the straight-out-of
sight two-lane road, past an old
gray goat that watched the moon
that watched him back.  All night
in the dark the engines passed
on through, bearing all
the coming years on their cars.
 

TANGO

She steps in soft black leather
to the dance.  She doesn’t ask her partner’s
name.  A crowded room, an easy
music.  But so many
friends have left the floor,
their shoes lined up along the wall.
Her partner guides on silent
soles.

A beast who used to wear
the skin of her pumps could sniff out
where they all danced to the drop-
off.  Some dumb animal
could puzzle out the disappearings
with its nose.

She steps into the dance
that carries her away.
 

A NATURAL HISTORY OF FRIENDSHIP, LEAVES

Last summer’s leaves, old friends
hang brown, familiar, wrinkled as skin,
dry chimes in the wind.  And still
they stay, refuse to fall, with fall
already a distant memory the other side
of winter.  This first spring morning
I pull an oak-bough down to touch
its fingertips -- and find the twig-heart
stubbed by a wasp’s sting.
This spring, the oak bears nothing
but waspish larvae.  No budding
green, only last summer’s leaves,
the old tree dying.
 

BORDER RUFFIAN FLAT

The moon that used to be a silver coin
got spent to a sliver while we slept.