SLIDE INTO ME

When you listen,
when you understand,
you slide into me,
erase my serrated edges,
smooth my roughened heart.

I BELIEVE IN TREES

I believe in trees
not God or angels,
although leafed-out branches
could be their wings. The good
don’t go heaven, their souls glide
into oaks, aspens, maples, elms
and birches where they wind
round and round until they
reach into the heart of the tree

THE WEIGHT OF SOFT

Cold-shredded clouds down-
drift in silken motion.
Almost weightless,
each speck’s sparkle-feather touch.

And yet —

powdery glitter masses on trees
until the weight of soft bends
and breaks branches
too big to imagine.

The frozen silence explodes.

***

All that white —
the street is white,
the sky is white.
Even my heart is white
I could rest my head on a white mound,
let my body sink into a snow shroud
my last breathe in —

white-fractured stars.

MYSTERY OF CROWS

Less body than ravens,
crows shine the same black magic.

Sleek bodies, sharp beaks, clever feet —
so deep the mystery of their black feathers!

Long ago they gathered in a murder
so large they blacked out the sun.

And night was born.

WINTER LOVE

He loves winter.
Clean, he says, and clear.
You can see into the heart
of the forest, the angle of the trees’
bones, sharp, crooked, naked.
When a rainbow arcs across a lead-
heavy sky, he looks not at the swoop
of primary colors but at the sharp-edged
trees inked on the austere horizon.
Beautiful, he says.

YOU ARE A SUGAR MAPLE

You are a sugar maple glowing amber and crimson
No bristled limbs, your leaves radiate from the center
I am a northern pin oak with a cleaved-out center,
My branches twist, I empty into the hollowed center.

UNEXPECTED MOON

Unexpected, this moon, perched
in charcoal blue far from the wind-shattered
clouds against the sky’s edge.
Pieces of the Songda typhoon ripped
apart the sky but not this moon.
Shocking this moon, not a spherical ball
but a communion wafer the night swallows
filling the purple-black with the glitter of grace.

MY MOTHER LIVES IN A TREE

My mother lives in a huge sheltering maple.
She breathes a message to me.
When you die, float out of your body
into the oak next to me. After we are felled,
Our hearts will propulse through the black.
Next to the center of the Milky Way
a binary star will explode into being.

WHEN HE LISTENS

When he listens
his body is a still blade of grass
in a windless lawn.
He tell me
young love is a waterfall
that bludgeons us,
but old love drips on a boulder
until the shape rounds
into never-ending.

STILL AS A BLADE OF GRASS

My husband’s eyes are underwater blue.
When he listens, his body is a still blade of grass
in a windless lawn. He tells me young love
is a waterfall that bludgeons us senseless,
but old love drips on craggy boulders
until the shape rounds into never-ending.