The Lateness of Summer

I
The Japanese beetle straddles yellow stamen,
with wings of corroded bronze,
devours my roses from the inside out.
He hangs in obscenity,
jeweled clear to the thorn.

II
The male crickets listen with their knees,
sing with ribbed wings on cow patties,
gormandize rye grasses.
While everything is dying they are procreating.
Nymphs bury themselves in the sand until spring,
release,
full grown Gargantuas
appareled in brown livery
by their fathers.

III
People say, "I used to know him once but now he is a stranger".
But look at the sheets,
unwashed, a soft spot on the downy pillow
where your head once was.
Remnants of musk and old skin.
Now I know you completely.

Here On This Earth

Selene skims along Quaker Lake.
Single file, in obeisance they touch her face.
Call out in long-bellied honks,
beyond cranberry bogs blood-caked,
over lime colored swamps
dotted with driftwood stumps.

The red wing blackbird is caught,
low between the fleshless reed,
her ebony neck bent and soft,
trussed in bulrush and snowy cattail seed.
How she lived and sang was for naught,
her brood gone by November's frost.

All is loss.

Lost On All Things

We walked the hot
tarred roads at night,
we in our Alleghenies.
Under thrumming lamplight,
Moon Moths limped on ripped wings,
collapsed into powder.

My body was different then;
you could count the notches on my spine,
belly fecund, my hands lit from within.

We embodied what it was to belong to words,
disdained the limits of human love.

In that small moment,
--slow kisses without the aid of touch--
The heat of our mouths
exchanged nectar.
No need to move closer.

Now all I think about
are the mountains,
where sodden entrails
of fallen oak slip,
converge at guard rails,
at the nape of my neck,
where cold and ache
stand in furrows.

I picture you smoothing them out,
in declarations of ardor,
a modicum of ichor,
lost on all things.

Unlost

There are still silver thimbles,
doorknobs and black-eyed peas.
I choose to scrub the kitchen floor
on my hands and knees.

Lines swagged with bleached linen,
paper Valentines to be sent,
sins of omission to be forgiven,
no dark chocolate during Lent.

Dirt shovels and the blackest pitch,
rings to slip on or take off.
The unattainable scratch
and the tormenting itch.
So many things unlost.

The Path to the Volcano

Up we went, mother and I
under one black umbrella,
her speckled hands
gripped the bamboo handle,
slick with drizzle and sweat.

Mine stacked above hers
could be as old,
one brown spot appearing
on the left knuckle,
years of bleach water
whipped the skin
into small rivulets.

Under my hands
the point of her elbow
becomes a rudder.
I notice her spine,
bent cane,
sticking up from her damp blouse,
split hull down the middle,
sloped and curved upward,
as steep as the incline we walk.

Pumice and ash make way
for minced patter
and swollen ankles.
She insists we see the volcano,
at a safe distance above lava channels.

The eastern sky rising
as powdery as the wings of moths,
flickering against hot spots,
burnt up with desire and hurt.

The basin's bitter crust buckled
a millennium ago,
now once again prodded,
emanates rose petals,
hollyhocks on her withered cheek,
and on mine,
our flesh melted
under the heat of magma,
our cheeks young again
under one black umbrella.

Voices of Their Own

I was told sea stars fell in love with humans,
threw off murex coverlets,
dove into icy oceans,
downward drifting angels.

They wait for me.

Blinded, they learned to sashay
across the outwash dunes,
beyond the drowned drumlin.
To what begs beneath;
what grows bayberry and cocklebur.

I am hoping to find a way to continue breathing,
a reason to come up for air.

At five, when the moon is a trespasser
and I am alone,the tide pulling, pushing.
Constellations arise from the sand,
hands raised and set to stone.
They trill in the old tongue
for the open violet sky
in voices of their own.