Liberty Says Hi


An old friend calls after forty years 
and I wonder, who are we really, 
when everything is stripped away?  

Emerson had pie for breakfast.  
Lincoln, too. 

Apple or cherry or peach,
with thick, doughy crust.  

Jesus is the Bread of Life.  

The dragon waits to devour the child 
but the child is born and the mother flees 
and the child grows up to be human 

like the rest of us.  He tends his sheep 
and thinks his thoughts.

And the name of the child is Liberty.  
And the name of the dragon is Time.





So Long to Remember

​
I dug ditches for Mr. Willmering,
whose wife was ugly, but kind.

When my brother came to dig ditches, too,
she made us tuna sandwiches
in her clean, white kitchen.

Why does it take so long to remember?
Why does it take so long to heal?

Carl Sandburg was a terrible poet, 
a professor once told us—he said this 
waving his hand—and it’s taken me 
forty years to get over it.  

Shoulders of hills.  Stalks of corn.  

Rich loam of the earth 
where we buried the pipe.  
Sweet smell of the earth.