Like the Veins on the Back of a Leaf

What’s next is what we want, why we think.
It’s the craft of brains, minds, guts, and math.
It’s the grift of the sage and the priest.

Who wants to know the world for the world?
We sift through it all in search of signs
Of what comes for us, of what we’ll find.

There is no next. There’s whoops, well, that’s that.
But that can’t stop our game of the guess,
Of the dread we can’t get off our chests.

Gods help us guess. Thrown bones, prayers, and tea.
Facts guess the best, pasts flipped we can trace,
Like the veins on the back of a leaf.

Lights, Taps, Limbs

The still of an out-of-the-way place,
Still, but where the odd soul’s still at work,
There to haul out trash, fix a bent fence,

Not the still of the pure, of the saint,
Not a grove for prayer, not in the wild,
Just out of the way, but still a kind

Of peace—that’s fine. Cold, but filled with light,
Not much wind, the taps of that one soul
Still tasked with odd jobs. Crows in the limbs.

The Pond’s Weird Sounds

A thin lid of ice held down the waves
But was just that thick you could skip stones,
Small ones, as if you meant to curl them,

Out on the shield for quite a long way
And hear the weird, sad ring the waves made.
(Yes, we know. Weird to you. Sad to you.)

Give the stone a flick to make it spin
And the ice would shrill and cry, half scream.
Two sad teens on the shore played to win.

Talk to the Dead Who Drift In

Straw huts for the rains

And winds to pull down,

The tales are what’s left

On this side of town.

Sit still. Knit your brows.

Don’t you dare touch those.

The words you can pick,

But not the whole rows.

Just wait by the creek.

Just sit on this rock.

Give the dead the choice

To blow through to talk.

So I did. I sat

And wrote my own lines.

When the ghosts came by,

Each one sobbed, That’s mine.