The valley otherwise
charred, this glade is
old-growth miracle.

This is what comes of a Lammas Eve, tho I did not think of that at all this
year until I had awakend at two in the night with the lines “My mother
would be a falconress.

The baby sings in her high chair
at the banquet.

I know most people at this table,
but not everyone. The keynote speaker talks
about how to make beauty in today’s world. A woman
we met during cocktails whispers
that she wants a picture of the baby.

Ray would say no.

He thinks he can protect her, but I don’t.

We flew through a thunderstorm on our way into
Pittsburgh, landing without incident, but a hailstorm
           descended, delaying our bags.

Yesterday in the locker room
a young man told his friend
how he did it to her

He was always so interestingly wrong.
I loved him, in fact for years couldn’t live
without him, he who helped crystallize

The dolphin was all undulation,
riding its whims and churning 
the ocean, dorsal fin and bottlenose

If you, X, take this woman, Y
and if you, Y, take this man, X,
you two who have taken each other

If a lone feather fell from the sky,
like a paper plane wafting down
from a tree house where a quiet boy

Something to drink helps, of course, and humor must live
even on that dark corner where once
your life was threatened. Something in the voice, in the telling,
must signal I am safe now and am trying