3 poems

Birthday

Knots of fire
tighten on my brow
a birthday

ice in the pants
free-for-all of Tulips
Peonies Iris

moss brightening
in the careless spray
of a waterfall
wet bark
among fiddleheads

all day sun
the cold mud
beckoning worms

teenage girls
slap through it
boys in bare feet
laughing

Brown Sugar

First shadows of spring
gnarl on a grey fence in sun
a capillarie creature
picking at the city below.

On wood, puckered branches
fingers of bamboo
and feathers sprout in the soil
like tucked straw.

Where are you?

At midnight I call
the long blind echo down
steel shavings burn up the rails
and rain through the tunnel.

Love, it went like that
the light came bright and high
and fell to dark
tasting just like brown sugar.

I Live Above A Bent Stop Sign

I live above a bent stop sign
And look down on eroded shingles,
Vinyl siding and the dark,
Iridescence bleeding into puddles
From awakened oil stains.

Lilac overgrows a sunken porch
And waste lots trimmed in frippery
Of plum and cherry. Smoke drifts up
From a couch through budded maples.

The sidewalk swarms with ants;
Its form reveals the topsy turvy earth.
Roots erupt and rain shapes
The slow, silent shattering of plates.

The long day wanes into grey
And I dream of African spaces;
Of old migrations to the sun
The many generations pressed into sand.

Names learned and repeated by ear
And tongue, the breezes of Eden.