Desert Rivers


These three Mexican gravediggers must know
Deep, earthy truths about dirt and regret.
And know something of halting words that flow

In desert rivers that have dried and set
Like misspent hope beneath the desert sun,
As if rivers might cleanse an earthly debt.

When the final words of last sad songs run
Like faltering rivers across this day,
Gravediggers know an ending has begun.

These three Mexican gravediggers won’t say
How desert death encircles birth to grow
Startling blooms in the barren sunbaked clay.

These three Mexican gravediggers won’t show
The ways ice cold embers reclaim their glow.

“Desert Rivers” was first published in The Piedmont Review.



For the Names of Things


Thank you for the many kindnesses 
you've shown me, if only from a distance.

Thank you for the blessings 
I don't recall and the ones I never noticed.

Thank you for your gentle way and steeled will;
for forgotten dreams, for imperfection.

Thank you for the blackbird and the wheelbarrow
and for teaching me the names of things anew.

Thank you for your failure to reply.

“For the Names of Things” was first published in The Tipton Poetry Journal.



A Brief Note to Josephine, from Diana


Take this quilt and let it blanket you,
in comfort and in loss.
It was stitched just for you
six generations ago.

Ever since, these colorful threads
have run through the lives 
of daughters, then mothers,
then grandmothers, then daughters.

Take this quilt and one day
spread it over your own children 
and over their children,
in comfort and in loss.

Everything is changing, and will.
But these ancient threads are holding fast.

“A Brief Note to Josephine, from Diana” was first published in Child of My Child: Poems and Stories for Grandparents