Selected Poems
Disbursements
You take the granite shoulder revealed
when the lake is drawn down.
I’ll take the bluets stippling the moss
beneath the birch grove.
You get the sigh of the white dog circling
down to slumber, and the flat stones
taught to pock, pock, pock
the shimmering surface. The jays carving
the dawn into strips of day are mine,
hell, why not throw in the crows?
You were awarded the red canoe, but that
was mine, you know, all of that drifting
under Orion and Cassiopeia, fingers
trailing, loon cry, no wake.
Previously published in Fifth Wednesday (Fall 2007)
Winner of the Editor’s Prize for Poetry (Nominated for Pushcart Prize)
Hospice
“Who is coming for him?” the nurse asked, and
in my confusion I thought the gulls were
angels rising and falling through the fog.
Or, they could have been fighter planes from an
old movie reel. Flyboy, I swear the moon
stopped climbing, sat like a whole note between
the power lines. One. Two. Three. Four. I counted seconds between your breaths. The strength of your heartbeat shook the bed still. Later, pulling into the driveway, my headlights caught possum slipping behind the shed, his long pink tail curling into shadow. Then the moon rose.