find my place in the blue


there’s a piece of blue
caught in your underbelly
in that ragged place of  soul
called home 

not knowing what else to do 
you throw words at the snowbank

watch them tumble down the slope
gather brethren crystals slipshod
ramshackle fumble and avalanche 
rumble a paragraph of noise

move along folks nothing to see
but chaos here and

there here and there
the crows fly as the crow flies
does that mean straight or crooked
I’d like to fly as the crow whatever 

the path whatever the air 
concede to the wind find

my place in the blue 
underbelly of clouds 
stumbletumble into god— 
drift like snow wherever 
the universe takes me





On the Occasion of a Day like any Other

​
Squabbling, gray geese melt out of gray sky, drop 
into a field—acres of yellow stubble and snow: 
small damaged soldiers parading in rows, 
disappearing over a small rise. I’ve seen this before, 

or something like it. Does it matter where 
or when? I want to say I can still be surprised. 
Surprised by the way snow changes from feathers 
to stinging pellets of ice and back again in a minute’s time. 

I can still be surprised by my heart’s everyday beat, my 
lungs’ insouciant rise and fall. I don’t want to say 
there’s magic in the ordinary or that the ordinary isn’t.     
But what else can I say on a day the world twists

toward the sun for the twenty-thousandth time 
in my life and the snow makes the most sensuous 
sound, shatters against the bonebrittle 
oak leaves still clutching their birdless branches.

-first published in and no spiders were harmed