quartzite

on a warm winter day
the absence of bees

trapped in ice

the cattails shape-shift
into clouds

It was only when I switched to unlined paper

that the poems began to come without being called.

Just by living and pushing back against the world

we build our memorials, our rings of stone.

Teeth sprung from their skull prisons

enjoy a second obsolescence as typewriter keys.

Audubon walk

admiring a pheasant’s
dismembered foot

On a friend’s kitchen counter,

three potatoes had gone feral, growing ghostly branches out of their eyes. I kept my shirt pulled down so my navel wouldn’t get any ideas.

For a moment I forgot where I was,

the familiar trail colored by my train of thought, which might take me anywhere.

In my dream the creek says:

I am not your pet. I can rise. In one afternoon I can take back everything I’ve laid down for a thousand years.

Someday when the world is entirely covered with roads,

there won’t be any place left to visit—and therefore no reason to ever slow down.

Of all doomed friendships,

none is more tragic than that between a compulsive blurter and an obsessive brooder.

such flakes

they can’t possibly be gathering
all on their own