She can hear the whistle

of her son's nap from two

rooms away

 

where her coffee's growing cold, her eyelids

fluttering in their ruched

caves—

 

the sun's gleam like a lemon

drop through the skylight, sky

a frescoed blue—

 

how sweetly the current tugs:

the oasis of sleep, the warm

frothing sea

 

of sleep that surrounds the oasis—

nothing easier in the world

than to succumb—

 

when comes the wave, the sonic

swell and roll, a subterranean lowing whose

reverberations

 

rouse her, wondering at its source: him:

this mournful whale song flows

from her boy,

 

beached by a faraway dreamscape,

his chest quivering like aerated

gills, his fingers

 

curling and uncurling—she presses

his hand between hers, whispers

into his ear

 

until his disquieting music ebbs to breath.

Although the disquiet itself

lingers,

 

till late that night her husband wakes

her with an eerie din of his

own:

 

Turn on a light! He pleads in a voice writhing

from the depths, though he's

next to her,

 

prone and pointing to where

the walls and ceiling meet. Look!

 

She knows his eyes are closed.

She smoothes small circles

on his chest,

 

asks him the next day if he remembers

what it was he saw—their child

can't fathom

 

bad dreams—it could be a question

of perception, his diurnal

singing

 

more play than plaint—but

the distortions ripple and over-

lap;

 

they flood her head like the clamor

of sea angels beating their

milky wings.

 

But her husband shrugs. Sand scours

her lungs. When she blinks,

she sees star-

fish.

 

 

 

 

 

The wind blows cold

through the blackthorn.

Sloe berries sugared by frost spangle

and shiver its branches—the ground

bleeds violet.

 

Pricked fingers to our mouths, we step

in silence around the brambles.

 

Fisher cat yowls are carried

from the squall line,

high-pitched portents of winter’s

full brunt still to come. Its eyes

punctuate

 

the shadows, an umlaut of caution

to the house pets hunkered under hedges.

 

Snow spits

in ragged pirouettes.

We’ve already forgotten

how sweet the rain on spring’s first grass.

Woodsmoke

 

chars our neighbor’s chimney.

We walk with our hands stuffed

in their separate pockets.

 

 

 

 

 

The kindling’s caught fire—

your first lament sparks

wild, an electric

 

flex and spring.

Only the green pine refuses

to burn.

 

The sphere of new grief

is the late August sun, cracked

egg bubbling on the hot

 

skillet, the cross-section

of an umbilical cord, cut

and clamped.

 

Poise’s errata arrives

late, later than now, later than

the stars collapsing

 

your heart.

Next spring, perhaps,

you’ll return to these woods,

 

to the sap’s indelible

stamp. But will you ever again

stand as tall?