April
2010, $13.95 978-0982162552 paper binding
poetry
from "The
Squanicook Eclogues"
January iii
from the notebook
The shadblow’s winter
bark is grayish-green, and arcs
A double helix skyward like a double stair.
Its slender, ruddy, three-pronged twigs are mulberry
And beige, no bigger than my smallest fingernail.
The linden’s lesions, caused by fungus and
decay,
Have fissured vertically, the clawmarks parallel.
And rusty dogwood, tiled in ragged, reptilian
plates,
Is sparring with its fuchsia-colored, knuckled
nodes.
The basket willow’s tasseled catkins dangle
in defeat,
Its twigs unraveling a yellow-greenish yarn.
The black trunk of a beech bristles its thousand
wicks.
Today is a daguerreotype, tinted and brittle with
loss.
Light dims the field. My fisted hands burn.
The crow shuffles its wings, arching over, is
gone.
