October 2012

It was her first time coming home from college.
She headed downtown for a drink or two.
Her girlfriend went home early. That was Christmas.
Now, under sapling pine trees in the clearing,
snowdrops are coming back to their old places.
They had been...

Its fine
incisors
grinding

my mother
fed my
father’s
fledgling
carpentry
concern
into her
adding
machine

as if its
hunger
could be
satisfied

costs and
savings
spooling
to our
wooden
kitchen
floor and
pooling

amounting
to nothing

a shop tool’s
shavings.

A small thing crawling toward me
across this dark lawn. Bright
eyes the only thing I’m sure I see.

You’ve come back to me,
haven’t you, my sweet? From
long ago, and very far. Through

crawling dark, my sweet, you’ve
come back to me, have you?...