Mama hated Fall

Leaving

Mama hated Fall—

said it made her melancholy,

all the trees losing their leaves,

dying.

She was staring half-blind

out the window of the cubicle

she shared with an empty bed

on the other side of the curtain

where her last roommate

muttered and moaned,

refused to eat,

and stopped breathing—

at the very moment the first blood

red leaf on the sugar maple

fell in a fluttering spiral

onto the cropped grass.

From mama’s worn recliner

she couldn’t see the scarlet

oak still holding on

to every one of its stiff spiky leaves

until the first day of spring

when the old tree at last

dropped its tough unyielding

regrets.

She couldn’t see because

she chose to close her eyes

on the Ides of March and missed

the final end of Fall.

Her still-dark curly hair arrayed like

a crown of oak leaves,

and the shape of her slack mouth,

an opening bud.

The Crossing

The Crossing

Kneeling backwards on the maroon

horsehair sofa, hard as a church pew

and stinking of Grandpa’s cigars,

the girl rests her hands lightly

on the arched spine, her bare knees

stippled by the stiff cushion.

Immersed in the "Wreck of the Ole ‘97 Train"

frozen inside the burl oak frame.

The wagon rushing the crossing, the split rail,

the lurching locomotive, the rearing horse.

The last pages of the story

missing.

She studies the signs. The hat in midair,

the girl’s bare feet,

the horse’s white teeth,

the buckling black smoke,

and the two crosses --

the broken tie under the unhitched rail 

and the leaning telephone pole.

The second hand on the Seth Thomas clock

stops at 5:54 while she gallops

through spawning fields of . . .

What if the reins break?

What if the horse bolts?

What if the engineer can’t clear the train?

Worlds of time for questions.

Is he falling or jumping out of the cab?

Why are the yellow windows empty?

Why is the girl wearing a white dress?

All the faces, even the horse,

turned away or hidden.

She makes herself small and climbs into

the cornfield, past the rooster foot roots,

under the broken barbwire, over the catback road,

the only thing moving.

She touches the girl’s hand

thrown out to brace her fall. It is warm.

Beyond the crossing she sees

a yellow window in a white house,

a woman setting the table,

three empty chairs,

the kitchen door,

waiting.

The aroma of Grandma’s pie

rattles the frame.

Hatless man, windblown boy,

barefoot girl, white horse,

ghostly engineer, invisible passengers,

all fall into the rhubarb.

Stepping Outside, Exalted Moon

                              Stepping Outside, Exalted Moon

                              Wild horses lunging uphill,

                              shaggy coats the color of clay,

                              feathered fetlocks thick as mufflers,

                              each delicate spiral horn.

                              On a steppe found only by climbing

                              sideways through time,

                              outside the silken rim

                              of our consensual world.

                              Gods dwell here --

                              mammoth white bison,

                              laughing coyote,

                              trumpeting unicorns.

The Deer Meadow

The locals think I’m crazy,

re-seeding by hand,

but no one will lend us a tractor

with a three-point hitch.

Machinery’s useless anyway

for wild grass seed tangled

with bits of stems, leaves and forb corollas

that clog the drill.

The week you lie paralyzed

on a white bed in a white curtained stall,

I pace the pasture you call

the deer meadow—

pioneering in reverse, shuttling across

the once tallgrass prairie,

scattering the russet seeds in an arc

for the coltish wind.

Potpourri of wine bronze gold gathered

at Big Creek and Redfeather,

with names like the poppling song

of the mockingbird—

Tahoka daisy, goldstem grass, dropseed,

turkey foot grass, bastard toadflax,

dame’s rocket, downy sunflower, hoary puccoon,

blanketflower, rocket larkspur.

No compass plant to guide me

through the maze of corridors,

no rattlesnake-master to vanquish

the tumor swallowing your spine.

Between bouts of rain,

poison ivy, thorns,

and the lopped off stalks of goldenrod,

I stride the scalp shorn field—

dragging fifty-pound bags of chopped hay,

each handful light as fuzzy hair,

clinging to the chaff, blanketing the beds

trampled by deer.

There is an intimacy in this slow spreading,

time to find a meadowlark nest

that survived the mower, its single speckled egg

unbroken.

Space to discover, beyond the chemical waste

of corn fields and hog lots,

below the wreck and rubble, a rhapsody

of chocolate hearts

pressed into the dark and yielding mud,

a duet of the delicate

cloven feet of the cinnamon doe

tap dancing at dawn.

In your deer meadow the wind-borne seed

will sprout from its safe

confining shell, raising a tender green

alleluia.

As I drop the last clinging seed

on the bare fallow ground,

your fluttering heart emerges

from a mantle of wildflowers.

Peonies after Rain

                                                                                

Hundreds of red and white flags border the square.

The bandstand erupts with echoes

of distant battle—

polished brass, steel,

stretched skin.

The cemetery sign says One Way, Do Not Enter.

But I am not driving through

like the faces behind glass on Memorial Day,

leaving red and white flags, plastic placards,

amputated flowers to dress up stones.

I am not bringing dead flowers

to remember the dead.

I do not want to remember

what’s left of you

in the black plastic bag.

The rain waited patiently until

the once-a-year folks drove away.

The peonies I planted have fallen in a circle,

white faces pressed against the grass,

shattered petals like shards of bone.

I found the skull of a deer in our woods,

fallen this side of the No Hunting sign

where the hunter did not track

the trail of blood, a clot of red

mushrooms erupting from the empty eye socket.

Walking the trail you bushwhacked,

I learned to see the world through your eyes.

Once, you stopped, looked up at the moon

and laughed. That’s when I saw the white rabbit

nibbling a moonflower.

A year ago I sprawled across squares of sod,

watching ants crawl all over

white peony globes. The buds refuse to open,

you said, until the ants lick off the sap

binding the petals.

A year has knit the broken ground.

Now a globe of white light rises

from the scattered petals.

I want see the moon

through your luminous eyes.

Searching for Entrance

Searching for Entrance


She steps into a postcard
where poetry is a boat with a white bonnet
rocking on a blue lap. Above Lago di Como,
Brunate rims the crescent, an artist's garret


for the jaded elite escaping the heat
or their husbands. Light falls in triangles
of honey-soaked parchment,
a place where no one sleeps yet everyone dreams.


The funiculare hauls her on a silver leash
up the roller coaster hill to the old Hotel Milano.
She tries to hold onto something
but the slant of the walls drags her back.


Restless, she wanders the streets,
cobbled canting capricious.
Every doorway filled with women in black,
furrowed faces hunting sun.


The handsome grocer
fails to rouse her with his amorous
still life: pyramids of polished pomegranates,
brown eggs in burlap bags, leeks cocked on a bed


of crushed ice, artichokes concealing
delicata under soft bristles.
Her life is already severed, burnished,
waiting to be consumed.


The maid drapes a clean white tablecloth
over her door lintel, every day folded
with a different design, a message for women
in frames -- look each day from a new angle.


Climbing above the mansions, she stumbles
upon a bed of bearded blue iris
below three stone steps leading to
what?


Each golden tongue for a day
shriveling to a question mark.
Tuberous toes dancing up the hill
long after the house has fallen.

Mother's Day Present

Mother’s Day Present

I am wearing a red silk dress when the sky bruises

bile green on the stretch between Bentonsport

and Keosauqua. If we get in a ditch

I’ll muddy my only good dress.

I keep driving.

Why’re you driving so fast, Mom? one of the boys asks.

I glance sideways without turning my head.

A veiled presence sucks black dirt

from bare fields, throws up

a wall of mud.

Our midget lunchbox is pushing ninety.

A mile south of town, only

sixtyheartbeatsfromhome,

the mud hits. I can’t see

the road.

The roar rocks the horizon, batters the glass.

Bouncing up and down in their seats,

the teenage twins shout, Cyclone Ride!

The youngest in the back

screaming.

I am wrenching the wheel as if I am driving

the wind, chanting all the names

of Mother and cursing

my red silk

vanity.

Sudden silence, wet golden light. We are sitting still

between the splintered remains of a shed

and phone poles shorn like corn stalks,

wet wires coiled around

rubber tires.

Mother’s Day present, whispers

the stillness. I wind among

black serpents,

shaking.

On Mother's Day, 8 May 1988, a single mother with three sons decides to treat herself to a nice dinner at a restaurant in Bentonsport, an old river village on the Des Moines River. It's a beautiful sunny day and when we head home after a delicious meal there are no signs of a storm. This is a few years before the U.S. National Weather Service installs the Doppler Radar network to give advance warning of severe weather.

          Heading north on Highway 1, about five miles from home a dark wall cloud forms to the west, whirling dirt from the freshly harrowed fields and emitting a loud, continuous roar. Having witnessed many tornadoes in this part of the United States called Tornado Alley, I immediately realize we're in danger. But there's no place to take shelter underground along that stretch of highway. 

          In such circumstances, you're supposed to get out of the car and lie face down in a ditch, but I don't want to ruin my red silk dress and I'm not convinced we'd really be protected from flying debris, the main cause of injuries and fatalities in tornadoes. Also, we're so close to home and the safety of our basement. I'm driving a Dodge Horizon, a little yellow box with a top speed of 80 mph. I put the pedal to the metal and push her as fast as she'll go. Not fast enough to outrun a tornado.

          By the time the wall of muddy rain forces me to stop, it's too late to pull over to the side of the road and I can only hope and pray that no one will drive into us while we're sitting in the traffic lane. The only other safe thing we could do in this vulnerable position would be to put our heads down below the level of the windows, which could easily get broken by the force of the wind, but by now I'm too frightened to think clearly.

          Tornadoes can completely destroy some buildings while leaving others intact. Flimsy buildings and anything else not firmly attached to the ground, such as vehicles, are especially prone to damage. So we are incredibly fortunate to survive sitting out a tornado that felled telephone poles, snapped power lines and blew apart a little shed right next to our flimsy little car and didn't flip us over or even break our windows.

          According to USA.com, the tornado that struck southeast Iowa at 12:47 pm that Mother's Day was a magnitude EF2 (strong). It was 60 yards wide and traveled 71 miles, from Bloomfield in the southwest to northeast of Washington, just grazing the west edge of Fairfield. It caused $25 million in property damage around our town, but no injuries or fatalities.

White Track

White Track

Snow paved paths white as deer tails

curve between Queen Anne skeletons

blooming with frost in February.

Cloven prints like pointed hearts cut

from sugar dough mince along the cryptic aisle,

immaculate impression until the melt.

I stay on paths beaten by deer

to protect my skin from thorns --

black locust, wild blackberry, multiflora rose.

Rime transforms every weed into etched

crystal candelabra, intricate lace on the altar 

of limbs, yet thorns beneath lace still pierce.

A doe, delicate legs tucked under,

a heart's beat off the path

lifts her head but does not bolt.

Through veils of breath we regard each other --

her lambent eyes, mine

awed by grace.