When there is hope for men I will finally doze and wake into the same dream.

“Prayers That God May Curse Other Angels”

the able-minded men sometimes make
a sorry case for strength,
with folding brows they might mistake
the softest rounds of honest cheeks

long across the shoreline’s break
or the gentle age of mountain lakes
for a heaven or a holy face,
for a future solid under shaking feet.

Kindly aims are no account for fakes,
for promised lands for exclusive faith,
If our devotions bring us snakes
over ankles, hiding quiet teeth.

Our world has known many to wake
from uneasy prophecies, to forsake
the future storms of black and flame,
the fires lit as, for gods, we seek.

able-minded men read books of guilded page,
sometimes convict truth with hate,
and spoil peaceful bread with ego’s waste
as age comes quick to leave hope weak.

we, the tiny, should worry beyond ourselves except in good will toward our gods.

“If We Can Feel the Coming End”

When the men are all bitter from the wars
Waged with stomachs emptied of memories of their mothers
And the women have lost their tears for loneliness and love
Gone way of the spirit of Roman ghosts,
We will have fallen asleep too few nights
In the beds of comfortable souls…

When the wells are full of family’s bone
And our children have lost their thirst for history–
In from the fields to pass their hours
Frightened and heavy in the corners
Of graveyard walls, eyes to the flashing lights
Of cemetery cities grandpa built
With his rough, rifle-and-hammer hands…

Grim neighbors have built their fences
Too often around our gardens
And we have only the age of Earth to repair us,
Only Appalachia’s legacy to hold our hope.

three: a meager mustering by a tangled tongue

01.
FOREGOING PROCESSES OF ELIMINATION

having finally found a solid piece of earth,
i have found a tiny truth to sew at my feet.
it merely takes a single bird to teach
the wanting to fly; and there are many
teachers who will lead you into glass.
maybe all but one.

02.
A NEW BOX

i found a slip of page
carrying your hand in light
buried among the tallest grasses grown–
taller than the sticks you found
full of Spanish snails.

the clouds had fallen
into your words with disregard
for a lovelessness as small as yours,
and some roots had their own
say in orange stains.

as i read your note to no one,
falling backward onto a pillow
of memories i’d forgot to revisit,
i couldn’t help but think that
what you need is a good box.

03.
WHEN YOU PRAY INTO THE DARKNESS, SOMEONE MAY BE LISTENING

you placed it there,
on a park bench, singing
secret songs for spirits gone.

i was lost and tired
enough to rest my legs,
hung over a bench
in my travels’ path,
a bench by which
you had passed.

i read your song,
know the words and believe
that my legs have rested
too long, too far
from where you may be traveling.

Two new, in the hush of passing opportunity.

01.
A TEST OF PATIENCE, OR THE FLAW OF THE FAITHFUL

What we think the both of us should know
Is hidden in the mouth of a hungry fish
And we have built our fences up around it,
Like a home in the flatlands you never grew up in–
You without your fences,
Holding none of your family at bay.

And I am a retired bird-watcher who,
By the small and discrete graces of ghosts,
Have begun to find the soil again,
Have begun to notice the flowering scripts
That rivers write as the moon stops in
And leaves again with waves.

Maybe I will find you sleeping on a boat
Drifting by, blinded by dreaming,
Fluttering eyes closed against your hands
And the ribs of a wooden hull,
Breathing slightly below the leaves
And the footsteps of timid rodents.

If you will wake I will cast a line
Across your bow to pull you in
To the foot of a new and steady home,
But if you will remain in sleep,
I will listen hard with a fool’s hope
That you will mumble, from your dreams,
Through your lips, my simple name.

02.
WE WHO WAIT HAVE ONLY ANCHORS IN THE MUD

Will you come again to my field,
Up among the oaks and chestnut?
Will you push and pull your oars
Against the fallen rains of winter,
To once again tell me stories of
The people God never left behind?

I pray–unpracticed–you’ll find a breath of time,
Between new loves and approaching dreams,
To find me among the croaks and crickets,
Burning a slow warm flame in an empty box
And sing, soft and rough through the shade trees–
Turned to shadow forests by the star-starved night–
A song you wrote once about a floating love you’d found.

Come again, without warning or fear, to me.
I am not waiting–my breath ceased holding
When the river spilled from its old path,
To the far side of town, across a bridge above dust–
But I will smile straight through myself entirely,
Upon your miracle return while making tea
Of flowers and river water, which we will take
With honey and the company of God.