On a May Sunday, I walked with the dust
along Sherando Road; a torrid day,
sweat beads each pore
in an honest baptism.
and kick beer cans, wobbling
the gravel shoulder like Saturday night dice.
 
Out of the country clapping church
comes Hell on the preacher’s voice,
hymns hum like a plague of gnats,
village cars drip oil on sacred ground,
old gravestones are ever slanting.
 
I trust the blind curve,
notice a two-fisted rock on the bank
is recently moved, so I flip it
with my walking staff to reveal
a hoard of green tinged pennies
like a nest of baby copperheads.
It is a youngster’s handful,
certainly placed one at a time
as a tithe for the body of his dreams.
                        

	for Tommy
 
		falls
from a tree
angels
cannot wing
him away
		falls
from
inertia
possibilities
abandoned
		falls
through
humid air
he
cannot swim
		falls
passed parents’
words
		chases
gravity
plumb-bob 
straight
		chases
the reach
of ground 
reach of the world
		chases
the crack
of elbow
splinters of bone
		chases 
the cradle-like cast
the lullaby
of anesthesia
		chases 
the knit
and mend
		finds 
the weight 
of experience.
                        

For nearly 800 years,
too close to the sun
to be seen, Jupiter and Saturn
with their child-like moons
are there over Jack’s barn
in myth-making proximity.
And we wish those too liberal,
those too conservative— 
each in their own orbit,
their own calculations— 
could come together in this way.
It is the solstice—
a sort of promise brought 
to earth.  Tonight, if clouds
obscure our view,
the two will still nearly touch
as we would want a truce,
a treaty, in the lengthening days to come.