Wolf Hollow, Pennsylvania
 
     They used to dig ditches here to catch wolves.
     Deep gashes stitched with roots,
     slick with melt,
     baited with deer necks
     that drew the wolves in,
     even the mothers, full of pups.

     All night long, they fell and fell,
     brewed fog with their own heat,
     dug everywhere only to find
     endless earth and darkness
     and the bones of other buried things.
     In the morning, they barked
     and shied and bared their muddy teeth
     at the farmers who shot them from above
     and cut off their ears for the bounty.

     The tiny ears of the pups,
     born on the tip of a knife,
     were like pink rose petals
     that curled and stiffened
     in my hand as they dried.
     That is what I remember best
     of the year before I was old enough
     to hold a shovel or a gun.

     Finalist in the Naugatuck narrative poetry contest, 2012

     Published in the winter issue.

     In Which I Watch a Live Feed from the Nkorho

     Pan Water Hole While Sitting at My Desk

     on Cape Cod

     I am addicted to Africa.
     To the high bob of a baboon’s tail,
     the way he eats the muck from his hind foot
     with such aplomb.
     I am addicted to a dusty ton of rhino and
     her spud-faced son
     forged of tungsten in the sepia dusk.
     To the giraffe following the atlas on her coat
     slowly through the fever trees,
     the hot geysers of her giant heart.
     The burrow owl that bids the buck take care
     where he sets his cloddish hoof.
     The zebra festooned with stripes,
     shivering at fly-touch as he drinks.
     I am addicted to the mutton-chopped warthog,
     wallowing in the brown batter at the water’s edge.
     The hunchbacked gnu, his beard a fright,
     the ravenous oxpecker that probes his teeming nostril
     with her candy-corn beak.

     I am addicted to all of this and more,
     to the belching of bullfrogs in the
     night, ticking as it cools,
     the twang of love-sick bugs,
     the rusty squawk of God knows what.
     And God does know what.
     What else a world like this could want.
     What else to ask of this box of
     filaments and miracles and Africa
     that sits on my desk.

     I wish there were a camera aimed this way,
     so they could look at me as I have looked at them,
     so I could be the stuff of their addiction, too.
     So they could see, in the squirrel outside my window,
     a phenom of pewter and grace,
     in the jay a deft orator,
     in the woman at my desk something exotic and fine.
     They would listen to her as if they’d never
     heard anything so unusual
     and wonder about the texture of her skin,
     the smell of her hair,
     what she is thinking as she sits quietly
     in her little room of words and photograph
     and waits for something wonderful to happen.

      Published in the 29th Annual Awards Issue of the

      Nimrod International Journal, Fall/Winter 2007.

      Awarded Honorable Mention in the 2007

      competition for the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize.

     The Voice I Wish I Had

     I want an NPR voice

     Smooth as water over stone.

     As deliberate as a cat at her bath.

     Kin to warm milk, cool hands, and lullabies.

     If I had an NPR voice,

     I could say 10,000 dead in Japanese tsunami.

     Death toll hits 144,000 in Rwandan genocide.

     Father kills his five children before shooting himself,

     and you would listen.

     But I don’t, no matter how long I stand in the shower,

     softly trying.

     I cannot say, US debt soars to 14 trillion

     and make you want to hear more.

     I cannot say Baby dolphins wash ashore with the

     oil in Louisiana

     and keep your calm attention.

     I cannot say Missing child found dead in dumpster

     without flaying some part of you.

     I want an NPR voice

     so when I tell you that I’m leaving

     you will curl your hand under your chin,

     blink your sleepy eyes,

     and to that lullaby concede.

     I want an NPR voice so you will think that

     the news is not so bad after all.

     And neither will I.

      Published on air and online by WCAI, Woods Hole, MA

     Divided December

     My son, the Buddhist, has a new job
     ringing a bell for the Salvation Army.

     Unimpressed by the regulation bell with which they

     armed him,
     he took instead a silver one I've always loved,
     to swing it like a lantern in a storm,
     that graceful arc warming him at his post
     outside the Stop and Shop throughout

     this dark December.

     “You’re going to hell,” hissed a woman who’d heard him
     chanting softly, the boy himself a bell.

     “Can I tell you about my wife?” asked a man who wore his
     spare hours like epaulets of lead.

     “You must hear that bell in your dreams,” said a
     man who dropped a quarter in the kettle as he passed.

     “I feel sorry for you,” he told the woman.
     “Yes, of course,” he told the first man.
     “Yes, I do,” he told the second,
     all the while ringing,
     all the while ringing.

     The Army has not yet asked him to wear a Santa suit,
     though he says he will, if he must,
     since Santa has little to do with Jesus
     and he has nothing against either of them, besides.

     But if they asked him to wear a crown of thorns
     or hoist a cross onto his shoulder,

     I suspect he would demur.
     There’s a limit to the uniforms he’ll tolerate

     for the sake of money.
     And, after all, the Buddhist in him is really in it

     for the bell.

      Published in the Summer 2012 issue of Off the Coast.

     Autumn Epiphany
 
     Into the morning, briskly, I walked,
     trouble barking at my heels,
     fear riding my wake,
     one long tooth away.

     Everything felt like storm
     though the day was bright.
     Everything felt like an ending underway
     as I walked on,

     looking for a new way home,
     away from all that tracked me.
     Instead I found a dead cat
     by the side of the road,

     its mouth open slightly
     as if to taste its last autumn air.
     A cat I didn’t know, had never known, and didn’t love.
     But the thing that stopped me so that all the

     worries at my heels piled up against my
     back like blind shadows, the thing that
     made everything suddenly quiet and still,
     was the coat that someone had laid over the cat.

     A good coat, worth something,
     tucked up to its chin as if to keep the body
     warm while someone went in search of
     a shovel, a way to come back here

     to scoop the body out of the pretty leaves,
     to lay it in a hole somewhere and cover it up.
     I wanted that coat as I have seldom wanted anything,
     certain that I would have been given it, had I asked.



     Published in Halfway Down the Stairs, September 2024