I’m tired of lying here.
The mountain and the river are not bad.
Sometimes a bear, a boar, or a deer

Grandmother’s United States washboard
Hangs on the wall as a lesson
From His Terrible Swift Sword

All Saints’ over, the roast seeds eaten, I set
On a backporch post our sculpted pumpkin under the weather,
Warm still for November. Night and day it gapes

Up the mountain again three years later,
rocking forward like a burro.
Breathing hard in and out.

Somehow the days take care of themselves.
Desire that feels as if it will scorch
The skin of wanting doesn’t get fulfilled

Summer was dry
but the farmers forget
and plow the dead stalks under.

No one but the prodigal returns.
Extravagance, the same as parsimony,
disguised a bent for pillaging oneself?

A fire truck goes by‚
  On its way to the station
With a low roar‚

Clouds scuffle and clinch in this March sky;
wind presses our turned collars to chin
and Chris casts his line against the grain.

The difficulties, in passion,
are not news: the knot at the throat,
the lipstick that smears, the skirt