Every word is a container—a canoe heading 
out on any waters, someone paddling it from  
shore after filling it with whatever’s at hand.

My canoe today is heaped with rhubarb 
tempered with strawberries, like the slices
of strawberry-rhubarb pie my first husband 
and I used to get for ourselves and our kids 
at that little fast-food joint on Route 22—
each warm slice served in its cardboard 
wedge, sweet flavor flirting with the bitter. 

Break a word in half it still contains multitudes—
whoever first coupled these two words saw that
sweet must pull bitter through the rapids, help it 
skirt sharp submerged rocks, never letting bitter 
take the lead.
  
Strawberry moon tonight for those who can see
or for those who will know that it’s there, even 
through the storm clouds. Look for it!

Some roads go nowhere—or seem to go on forever
their brown dirt and gravel spinning up under my
wheels, green-head  flies battering my windows.

Some roads seem to go nowhere. Be here now
swampy tangles remind me. Look at the wild black
berries not yet ripe, vines entwining dense shrubs.

I have chanced on this road today, seeking escape 
from the nowhere I’ve been in, from tangled days
that never seem to ripen. 

Be here now, though the light is waning and 
the road I have taken stretches out ahead of me, 
perspective narrowing to a distant dark point. 

This is the road I’m on now—my random impulse 
luring me deeper into the illusion of no escape—into 
this fairytale woods that would swallow me whole.

Every so often another dirt road intersects, beckoning 
me to turn off and try it, hoping it might lead me out, 
not strand me among the pinewood ghosts.

At last I see a highway ahead, a paved promise of  
release after all—yet coupled with my relief, I feel 
a strange reluctance to let go of being lost.