Your Organic Garden

Late at night you drown 
earwigs off the daisies, 
holding them with tweezers 
underwater. 
Anything that won't pinch back 
gets crushed, buried in a glass. 
 
Like fingers of the moon 
you reach beneath the dill, 
the eggplant and the spinach-- 
soft, broad leaves flat against the ground 
like hats of plantation owner's wives. 
In a humble garden, 
you're no sinister than any other woman 
 
with a flashlight, or a jar of drifting wings. 
One afternoon we even watch 
a purple swallowtail hatch: 
its velvet body vibrates 
wet from the cocoon 
crawling up the vine,  
like a plant toward sun, as you bend 
back all the stems  
just to reach the air. 
 
 

    First Published In Stirring: A Literary Collection 
 
 

Melanoma 
 

Every month the doctors check

each stretch of her,

down to the paper ribbons

wound between the toes. 
 

But I see only skin

the color of mocha,

freckles of cinnamon and clove.

As auburn hair falls upon the table 
 

she tells me how they examine

the neck, the elbows, the delta

of the back, where a cool rain pours,

and I ask can I see the scar 
 

so she pulls a sleeve away

from the center of her arm

revealing seared streaked skin

the color of pork left on the barbeque. 
 

This is the opposite

of what a kiss might do,

an unraveling of flesh,

the threads tied down. 
 

She stares at me through glasses

thick as bowls of water.

At twenty five she already talks

beyond the afternoon. And after 
 

our awkward conversation

I return to editing her poem,

erasing a few lines,

as if my hands could change

a story not my own.         
 

                         First Published In The Chiron Review 
 
Small Hours 
 
Some nights the spirits cling 
like water in the kettle. 
 
3:15 am. 
My eyes are hour hands 
extended, the lashes flat, 
half-lidded. 
 
In the rough wool quilt 
of a December sky, 
you sleep--only a cheek--peach 
skin--peeking through. 
Here sunlight 
mottled you red 
 

and where you're pale, 
your mother pulled 
you down the rain swept streets, 
and a lover 
moved you like wind 
into an orchard. 
 
You sigh into the pillows. 
In the kitchen 
our tea mellows in the cups. 
The scent of almond lingers

and I imagine 
the insides of the peach pits,

their dark roughness 
stuck upon my tongue. 
 

            First Published In Poet's Canvas 
 
 

Feeding The Ospreys

                    Rockcastle County, Kentucky, 1996 
 
 

This is the view we sought

when we volunteered,

peering through a cage 
 

into the river's griddle of flat water,

watching ospreys tear

fish heads from the bucket 
 

swinging from your arm.

We cling to a pull down ladder

that stretches through a mesh 
 

of November evergreens.

Amid raptor reek

and soggy straw, carrion beetles 
 

rush from hollows in the wood,

each with a morsel of flesh

scuttled between the slats 
 

in early light.  This is the final day

atop the rickety ladder, the last glimpse

of hooded eyes 
 

peering back so steadily

it could be ourselves

awakened in the dark. 
 

We let the door swing free,

in a surge of feathers

rising up like fast water. 
 

It is difficult to leave

birds we hand fed for a year.

So we stare  
 

as they trace the ribs

of cirrus clouds. Full of hunger

they almost disappear

above the quickening waves. 
 

                     First Published in The Lousville Review