Ash

Leaking smoke like
a sawed-off shotgun
this smoldering second-half
of a ground-out cigarette
cocked casually from
the pickup's open window.
Gray ash dusts away,
a breeze-blown hourglass,
and the light changes.

Soft

You are that soft strength, my sea anchor--
not plunged into the sand, a sullen sodden rope pulled taught
across a widening gulf between us--no,
you are that gentle weight at my back, moving with me
yet holding me so that I do not drift,
making me more solid through both waves and wind at once,
and I'm always circling back to you.

The strength of rain: a current coursing ever earthward,
more insistent in its flow than any Nile
or Mississippi as they wind and wend their way to sea.
And yet the rain is careful, soft,
tapping tip-toed to the ground small drop by dainty drop.
And how much more does soil love
the rain than any river's flow? How much more strength
than streams does rain endow?
And what but its sweet fall could form the softness of a rainbow?

Matched

There is tragedy in the arithmetic of Wednesday afternoons.
Two by two they're matched, then paired
and placed in a warm embrace to rest softly, together.
But left behind, with the dryer sheet, these three:

one whose double has been missing, adventuring somewhere
in unknown jungles for forgotten months;

two that nearly match, but not quite,
and so are only worn when all others have been chosen--
held in reserve until no one else is left,
but singly, no folding together so that they
will have someone to hold on to in the quiet dark.

June

Tired fans blow worn-out breezes
'cross the sun-burned brick.
Rivulets of heat run down
in beads of fiery sweat.

What I should have been posting

I saw eight poems this week.
At least eight. Those were the ones
I knew I should write down--and didn't:

The smell of dew forming so thick
that the weight of it pressed all my worries
through to the antipodes,
leaving me singing along
with my windshield wipers.

Waves of heat rising from a roof,
an oasis hiding on the other side.

A songbird cheering as rain poured around her.
Too giddy to compose an aria, she trilled
and trilled again.

Relaxed curls spilling onto my hand,
her ear resting on my chest.

Scratches on the side of my car--
faint, white
like clenched fingers and irritated muttering--
and an unbroken mirror on the ground.

Megan dropping her pen three times
before it hit the ground.

A car parked quietly behind the house,
patiently waiting
but not telling anyone why.
No one was at home.

And a notepad of empty sheets
all hoping to carry a poem home
but returning just as wordless
as when they walked out the door
for over a fortnight.

So many poems I didn't see.