Cupboard Weather: Last Steps: Going Home

steps along the roadway
cars zoom fast
ignore me and my iPod
it's set on random
like my walk
I think it's eight miles
though it's actually less than three
days are longer
my eyes don't register those few minutes
but my heart does
I'm random like cars and music
and happy to be striding
purposefully into the silent evening

Cupboard Weather: 52 Weeks: Advent

I'm finished with expectation
the weary slog of cooking
of buying and paying
done with pretense
coercion smiles
I'm tired just the getting up
or lying down has become
too much
the blanket
like a shroud pressed on my shoulders
I don't mind
the weight of yesterday
cold a frozen slush of memory
regret crushing boredom
I wait for the perhaps in the morning

Desk, Virginia's

                                  

I imagine the desk a little lopsided, shimmed with love letters.

The sun from a far corner blanching the wood yellow.  

I picture her standing, leaning in at the desk 

binding the pamphlets by hand.

Bites in the darker wood where her hips pressed. 

Rings like bruises where bottles of thin ink rested. 

There’s a faint scribble in the middle,

sunken swatch

where wrist and elbow worked.

I imagine her sharp pen catching in the grooves.

In the next room, ghost sounds,

lead type dropping into wooden boxes 

Her husband standing at the hand press. 

Her fingernails bitten as she coins       

phrases    jump the fence    sticks and stones

Fingers sawing away at perfection. To get to 

the brain bone.   Nowhere for the novelist to pause,

whittling away at the wood of the night.

  after a photograph by Annie Leibovitz

Cupboard Weather: Cold Rain

the bricks grow moss

coats like lambs wool

or clover

cold rain brings false Spring

floods mudslides traffic tied in knots 

steamed windows and milk

waiting for the coastal hills to turn

lush fertile as they burst into Winter

Point in Front of Me Like a Brick

Cupped prayer around 
the cup against the cold 
that we imagine
will be here tomorrow or
the next day on this dry
pane of today's uprising
steam. 

While elsewhere is 
the burning disbelief 
I recognize
the once still mothers 
breaking windows, their
visages stare back
at me from the things
drowning inside the cup. 

from Letter to an Unknown Sister: How the Cupboard Squeaks

Dear Visitor of Ivy turning,
brown as winter knocks. Come in, 
inevitable weather. Wilt of wave 
wrapped around a chair with 
staying power. You once shared 
Springtime with me. I thought you 
poisonous at first but others 
reviewed the tips of your tendrils 
green and whispered otherwise. 

Cupboard Weather: Spring

if Winter comes

then rain

if rain comes

then earth

If rain and earth come 

then grass turns hills

if rain and earth and grass

if Winter and hills

if they as in a plural or a group

they as a family or intention

they as a moment when

night is at its darkest

then Spring