sounds

This is a list of the sounds I love:

the birdthick dawn. At six their whistles
are manifold, intent:
sweet squabbling

Felix and Geneva in the next room
are trying to whisper;
giggle,
their Lego's plastic crashes--
their floor is an avalanche
in blues and yellows

I do not love
the coffeepot's unlovely, adenoidal drip
the baby yelling to be uncaged
over the dishes' clink and scrape

I love a two year old's unhesitating best
S, L, R: how proud
they trumpet new, unperfect words!

I love old music. My husband's fingers dancing
medieval tunes:
my bones remember
these dances

I love doxology. The ancient creeds
recited with the saints through history.
I love the Justs and Ums of corporate prayer.
I love it when the preacher starts to shout.

I love to read a newfound poem aloud,
or an old friend.

I love the sounds of summer night,
thick, like sweet wine

and all the sounds of summer days:

the buzz and hum of ceaseless bees
lawnmowers
leafblowers
dog barks
faroff sirens
rushing cars
rap bass rattles

a distant laugh

the small sound the dirt makes
fingersifted:
light and rich enough
to eat
Sometimes, I think I hear the beanshoots growing
so eager-unfearful--
How they grow, and sing!

those beautiful children:
they are lifting up their faces,
they are green and little suns

chicken

my daughter's pink bare feet
fat, and flat beneath her
on the porch concrete

her tiny chinpoint turned
she's perched
like a chicken

she's peering sideyed
eyeballing insects
drift and scramble past

hungry, her perch:
she might dart out her tender neck
to peck up

piecewise--one sixlegged wonder
at a time---peck
up this wide wonderfull, this world

talent

It lies heavy on my palm:
small
and cold
how like a hole
in my hand
how like a chain
around my neck--

how much could i purchase
with this single coin?

It is a weight
i cannot walk with it
to market
to buy or sell
myself

I will bury it
at my feet
and sleep
until
a silver seed
untended
unwatered
it may
perhaps
increase--


will i dream rich dreams for you?
Yes
Let me sleep

song (version 1)

Hello, little snake--it's you again
bluescaled and cold
so heavy
on my skin--

I feel your cold scales pressing,
slipping up my toes
little metal ribbon
pretty ribbon
Friend, hello.

Come be my little anklets,
come weigh my ankles down,
come curl around my ankles,
hold my feet down in the ground.

You don't surprise me
little greysnake, little
friend
i heard your little whispers
i knew you were here
again--

you whispered little secrets
little lies inside my ear
heard you hissing in my headbones and
I knew that
you were here

Come be my little anklets then,
come weigh my dancing down,
come curl around my footbones,
come keep me in the ground.

Greysnake, bluesnake, little
friend
I knew that you were here
again
The way you turn my eyes grey, how
you pull my eyelids down
The way you press against my teeth
every time i smile, or frown

Come be my little anklets then,
come weigh my ankles down,
come be my little friendlet then
come hold me in the ground

I won't go dancing deeply
I won't go far from home
I'll just dip my toes in
wear you wrapped around my bones.

a birth day

Once on the day after Christmas I lost an earring,

half of my Christmas present, a little smiling kawaii squid

(this in the bad old starving days 

when I was a girlshape made of brittle glass,

I wasn’t sad

I wasn’t sad)

it slipped out sometime that day—

when I was pulling espresso shots, ignoring 
the cramping 
and the clotting—

or maybe later at the clinic.

I don’t remember their faces, 

just the white coats

the necklace stethoscopes

they said any residual tissue would be 
taken

lab tested

I guess they sent us the papers

later

I was too numb then to ask 
for the scraps 

so we left 

bereft 

All I had of you then 

was my lost earring 

Later you gave
your first 
last

best 

gift:

the glass cracked 

that night 

we cried,

I cried

I could never have been your mother

I tried

I tried

I think that I was born then,

when you died

gray november

A soft gray shawl, pulled
in around the earth, warm, wispy,
near: November sky

 *

Invisible birds embroider November:
Long satin whistling,
twitters picked and clustered,
french knots
in a gray flannel sky.
And at brown bushes
and leafbare branches,
they loop their songs,
crochet their lace around
the world's winter border.

 *

this warm november
the sky
is soft and gray and sweet
sad
like a beloved, outgrown toy

damp and close on the earth
and on shoulders
pressing down the corners of your eyes

it says, curl up your toes
your eyes look tired
sit down awhile
sleep

*

let's be bears today
it's too damn cold to get up
november morning

haiku september

less angry sun. The waspsbuzz around the eaves, the bush,
buzz loud, do not rest

one last rose, magenta
magnificent, full blown, drops
lazy petals down

the grass, full green, strewn
with dropped leaves dried to old gold,
smells dry, smells warm, smells sweet

sometimes through the gold
still air, a furtive giggle,
a hint: fall visiting