Three Poems

Another White Room

Dirty and frayed
On the examination room’s
White tile floor
A maple seed sits

Its veined, crisp fin
Never figured to settle
Under fluorescent lights
When it spiraled to earth

In this quiet room
We plot our separate escapes
Down hallways and stairs
Back into the wind

 

Tavera Cemetery (Winter Solstice)

That bright, October morning
When my only choices were
Running over caterpillars
Or staying off
The barely paved country roads,
Led to days of solar flares
And watching cold rain
Stretch from
November clotheslines.
All the while,
I knew magnetic north
Was not true north
And nothing I could do
Would stop December.

Now, on this shortest day of the year,
As sudden warmth makes old snow
Drip from awnings
And muddies my back yard,
I remember walking
Next to my parent’s house
Through the cemetery
For a town that no longer exists
And calculating the ages
Of the dead.

 

Days When

Nothing good can come
From gray Thursdays.
Days when
Saturated grass
Holds footprints where children
Walked through the churchyard
On their way to school.
Days when
Rain bounces off
A blue tarp covering
A half finished roof
And pools in the grooves
Of an old woman’s clear,
Plastic head cover.
Days when
A drop of water
Rolls down a pine needle
And I wonder
What it feels like
To be so fluid--
So transparent--
Living on something so quick and thin.