trim their nails,
shape-shift through the hours
it takes to forge a
single silver bangle.
West
Gold straw spikes through
the snow; the horizon
is the next lip of road.
A ball of fire in the sky,
buffalo bones and blue light
in the coulee:
once all the keys are turned
in the lock,
the mountains thin,
the sky tunes itself
to the eye.
All this a gift.
I was not hurt,
just dragging a wing
to lure evil away.
Death
In your heart is a window,
and a furnace in which gods walk, unharmed:
do not accept my word,
follow no one.
The effect of death
is on the heart:
a lamp goes out,
the soul is dismounted.
Don’t listen to me,
don’t run to it.
It sets off and abides.
No vision is necessary,
death is a bridge:
mirror its spaciousness
in the dark wood.
Dark Wood
Hostile to the traveller.
Southeast
Look there: your mother’s hands,
and a latch to reach her;
she understands desire:
how she longed for you.
Longing is a match,
heart with heart.
Look there: a woman and child
draw on the glass I mentioned
(shut or open, broken
or whole)—
snowflake
sun
moon
tree house smoke
fire fire fire
Gold stars on the leaves.
Who?
Someone tells you about serpents
and angels and your heart says:
three friends, a fiery furnace, a stairway,
garden, wood, flight…
Who do you think you are—Dante?
Oh, doubt and mystery. The gods
wash sweaters,
pair socks,
complete the divine between bouts
of carpentry.
The Carpenter
My father says, you cannot tell
the true metal, it is mixed in this world;
he says, let’s make a pact to talk to the dead;
he says, you can’t assess the system you’re in
when you’re in it;
he says, I’m tired of talking to all these spooks.
I crawl out from under the four directions,
to sit with him, on the arm of his recliner,
at a window that looks over a threading willow
to the sea;
we glimpse sails,
and my mother, in the square below,
swishing her skirts against her stockings.
Skirts
You pull my sweater
over my head,
unbutton my kilt,
slip off the pin.
Pajama top,
then bottom,
teeth brushed,
and prayers.
You sit on the bed
and I pleat your skirt
with my fingers;
your kisses pattern my face
like a constellation.
I turn my face toward time:
you step backward, out-of-bounds.
My father and I peer through the fog
that undoes you, feet to eyes,
strands of hair, maybe a ring:
he looks at me, finds you there
as I ready him
trousers, shirt, socks, underwear,
pajama top and bottom
for bed.
Good night
Good night
Here it is.
My friend tells me her dream and I listen fully.
About her son and daughter picking flowers.
They look like little marmots—first, the flowers
and then the children. It is a dream of marmots.
—P. K. Page, “Marmots,” Collected Poems, Volume II
Once, long ago the trees were frozen,
dull winter lowered, there were no flowers or choirs; my mother
still lived—yet the weight of grief, like a sack dully
hoarded, an armful of sad thought and mind
boarded over my eyes. I was an animal
kept warm, but why? Then light bleached the bed,
I sat up from my coffin—
My friend tells me her dream and I listen fully.
Ten dark-robed men stood nearby:
their presence surprised, like the earth mined,
or mountains gullied by time,
ten times the sharp incline and decline of the road.
One helped me step out,
and I stood, in my nightdress, the cold like a shower,
and the