Sometimes it goes like this

One morning you wake
with the word mujer on your tongue.
You go to work like any other day.
You’re pouring coffee
when someone says
he’s a published poet.
The guest speaker
the PhD from Havana
she offers her hand
and damn—
it’s such a fine dress.

all that is holy

it must be a truth
that everything holy here
will come to an end

elimination annihilation obliteration
so many long words
for that blinding white flash

all that is holy must come to pass
these kingdoms of light
built only on blindness

unfurling blooming blossoming
what can we hold
even time will cease

these clods of dirt
wounded and broken
left in our hands

it will all settle to silence
winds will echo
no more

eternity
composed so entirely of nothing
an emptiness we keep hoping to grasp

cut corn

a small pot of corn
to warm your cold blankets
a thin slice of butter
you eat cross legged in bed
each spoonful
every last kernel

it will never be any better than this—
the quieted room
an empty spoon   

unafraid of lightening

you mete out rage
in heights of branches
assailed by wind
a hard rain in your face—
the sun emerges

you sleep in wet grass
against the knotty trunk
stars appear
ascend to zenith
streak back down

like embers
luminescent trails
above the cricket song

letting go

how smooth the ice
across a windless bay
the almost perfect circle
of a silent moon

as if color is sweetness

look how she paints cantaloupe
halved in morning’s long light
as if color is sweetness
worked into the wounds
of her old wooden table

each morning she goes to the market
selects what fruit she can find
and with her worn brushes
she wends her way
well into moonlight 

she understands the sun departs
much in the same manner it arrives
mingling its orange strands
among streaks of shadow
spilled on the floor

and in this light
she takes her last peach
gives it a new color
over and over she does this
slicing cantaloupes peaches pears

until
she sees what she’s searching for
it is the color of mango
held in her first love’s hand  

my dear wasteland

i'm only a smudge on your cheek
a shadow of nagasaki burned into stone
i'm the last hour of winter
made of that same atomic light