Somewhere Downhill


So much young fruit in the wicker basket
wet with rain, and hands
full of almonds and straw,
the girl seems to know me.

I will be a father in these hills.
Her black eyes will keep me in her years.
I smell her hair,
she passes and takes with her
all my days.

"Somewhere Downhill" first appeared in The Long Islander





A Distance of Summer

 
I could see everyone I knew
going about their lives
without me 
like birds on an April day
touched by the thinnest light
the weather inexplicably perfect.
The distance between us
filled with towns.
It could have been a dream
where everyone was a stranger
lived in old white hotel rooms
the wallpaper
a string of delicate sparrows.
Struck with a silent language
my mouth grew full of purpose
and could not open.
And each of them, everyone
became more and more
a measurement
I could never fathom.
After a while I became less and less
astonished at the distance of a light-year
and how summer after summer
vanished without so much as a
wave of the hand.

"A Distance of Summer" first appeared in Long Island Quarterly