Elegy for Bill Reed

Day one was easy. We drank coffee and talked for hours
on a hip Fort Mundane patio. Phantom of the café, eccentric, broke—
in lonesome kenosis, you pondered Fibonacci in the hearts of flowers.

Lazy dharma sealed our communion. I worried if you ate or showered.
Dear brother, you always reeked of ashtrays and ancient smoke 
when we drank coffee, watched ends glow, and talked for hours.

Proud mathematician, you bragged that you fled CU’s ivory tower.
I applauded. We were sort of Fort Morgue buddhas when we spoke
of nada, paused and wrote of Fibonacci in the hearts of flowers.

My kids called you Uncle Bill on Thanksgiving. Your exponential power
grew petaled mandalas, maxims, poems, countless philosophical jokes.
I bloomed, too, when we drank coffee and talked for hours.

Yellow walls, yellow teeth knocked out by stroke. Your guffaw never dour.
Soft-hearted old hermit, saved by love—your fractal mind, unyoked,
simply preferred, over kinfolk, Fibonacci in the hearts of flowers.

Especially Rose. You texted once: I fear dying alone. How were
we to know you would—of course you would, gentle misanthrope—
as we laughed, lit matches, drank coffee and talked for hours?
Now you dream electric seeds, Fibonacci in the hearts of flowers.

2021

for my dear friend, with no obituary, who would likely prefer the title, "Billanelle"

You Can Fill a Jar to the Top Twice

1.

Here, among the living, I speak to the mothers

of the dead. Seek out bouquets of hairy nettle,

contemplate the healing sting. Pinch off leaves

with thumb and pointer finger, gently, gently,

unstung. Or, in your rush, learn the joy of green

burn, that dull lingering. Spread this medicine

on a tray. Dry your gatherings in the dark.

By crackling fistful, drop them in a quart jar,

top them off with boiling water. Lid the brew.

Steep four hours. Drink deep to reach the ache

in your sobbing, perimenopausal womb

where the child once swam and breathed you.

2.

Here among the living, I speak to the mothers

of the dead. Valerian rises under the plum tree.

You didn’t expect a scent so sweet, white blooms!

You had to look it up, learn what to do: uproot

the long primeval stalks, smell the roots, wash

them in your kitchen sink and chop until the whole

house smells of teenage boy socks: colossal,

sacred, reeking feet. Grab a wide mouth Mason.

Pack it to the brim with roots. Fill it full, again,

with your favorite spirit: vodka, brandy, rum. Steep

six weeks. Sleepless, spoon it stinging, stinking,

under your tongue. Hold it there, burn. Lie down.

Circle the umbel of sleep. Press your cheek

against the soft in-between, lost queen. Nestle in.

Dream him.

2021

for Rosemerry

with thanks to Susun Weed for the title and Kierstin Bridger for the writing workshop

I Didn't Have to Wander Far

Clover is right here beneath me,
woven into grass, good friends.
Old Walt, I suppose, if I were
a grocery boy, a favorite sister, 
a mother of men, as I am, 
would want me to lie down 
here with him, perpendicular,
my head on his chest, both 
of us broken, both of us face up
into this willow where the sun
has travelled all night to throw
a thin, holey blanket over us.
A river breathes through tides
of faceted green, a sway, cooling 
my blood quaking with preemptive 
relief, a soothing reminder, respite
from what's to come. I store 
the chill against oppressive heat 
in my body's deep water, a battery.
Tree roots crawl along the surface, 
snake through grassy clover,
gather what they can, gather me.

2021

with thanks to Rick Kempa for his walking writer's workshop, Riverbend Park, Palisade, CO

Keen

One day our flesh and bone were nearly,

then dearly, cut away by hands we made.

One day strange hands filleted our breasts,

beloved friends, from our narrow rib cage.

Our men hold ground, grasp our feet

lifting off, pull us down from pain to arms,

from frayed rope, from blood, from knife,

from gun smoke, from sky, from fruitless hope.

Sisters! we cry, mountains away, our hands

too far to reach each other’s face and crown.

Distance requires wailing into phones

No no, no no, breath-broke, broken stones

rolling through our animal throats—pitched

grief washed voices only women know.

Do not mistake this duet for a song. If flesh

were not going or already gone, if someone

stood outside our panes of glass, peered in,

watched the scene unfold in silent mime:

our hands pressing slim machines

against our ears, our pacing out a pattern

on the rug, our gaping mouths, spasm spines,

eyes clamped shut, heads thrown back

could be mistaken for our ancient belly laugh.

Tapestry

What can you weave

into that beat up rusty door

you found in the barbed wire

arroyo? There’s a hinge,

a corner bent by force,

a strange gill up its length

wind has strummed

for decades. You could

shave your head

and thread the metal loom

with hair. You could mount

the door over a bulb,

let light create a shawl

for a room. You could

poke chicken feathers

through, fragile

reminders of impossible

flight, or gather up

the line of your blues,

that leather cord

strung with shells,

hagstones, sea glass.

You could ignore it,

leave it leaning there,

echo of the wobbly

garden gate, a forgotten

impulse weeds

grow through.

2020

Slow Touch

A woman lies open eyed in the dim morning. 
He is finally asleep after another 4 AM waking. 
She mostly lets him drift, sometimes 
interrupts his snore to wrap an arm around, 
across him, until decades of ache drive her 
back into solitary postures. Soon, she reaches 
again, hand seeking the buried beat inside 
his silken chest, places a kiss, another, 
on his warm shoulder. He sighs the sigh 
that comes from slow touch, manages a turn 
to lay his heavy arm across her waist, his hand 
somewhere in the void beyond her. She waits 
for that hand. Only when bored restlessness
and the clock finally win, when she sits up, pauses, 
feet on the chill floor, does he reach to caress 
the small of her back or hip poised to stand. 
A small investment. They both know she must go.
Perhaps it is similar to the way she calls her mother 
when she is driving toward mountains, knowing 
she will lose signal soon and the conversation 
has a sure expiration, will not wander on for hours, 
her mother’s retelling tales of loss and longing, 
ever etching grooves—waiting to be played, waiting 
for the needle to drop—on her daughter’s body.

Mountain Monsoon

Loud seconds turned ten minutes white.

Ice marbles shredded pines, and hundreds,

no, many thousands of tiny piñon cones

dropped like fists across flagstone paths

and bounced in drunken dance with hail

through carefully tended beds. Blood roses,

poppies, lilies, coneflowers, daisies,

hollyhocks, pots of mint, tomato, petunias,

basil, sage—all torn, bruised, deflowered

by odd stones, assault tangled up in rain

and new needles, everything now a sodden,

sad mulch. The quadrennial promise of pine

nuts lost—days later, ragged hands of hostas

raised a stand of pale poles. Purple buds

hung limp above green tatters, never bloomed

in surrender. Fire ants collected their nectar.

Ode to My Old Shovel

After admiring Fred’s—a thin, 
stubby-bladed thing
that cut just deep enough, 
freeing up a perfect scoop 
of manageable dirt 
my softening arms could heft
without undo sweat or back 
damage—the old farmer 
told me I could likely find one 
in the junk store
across the tracks, owned 
by a local hoarder 
who turned her piles of pots, 
clothes, games, lamps, 
tarnished antique spoons, 
vintage knick knacks,
candy dishes and early 20th 
century shovels into cash. 
I did. There it was in the back 
corner of the dim building, 
cobwebbed, silently sifting 
dust with other forgotten, 
slim implements, rusted brown, 
all of them leaning 
against walls and each other 
like a morning lit table 
of retired farmers sipping coffee, 
gossiping, reminiscing 
the sweet promise of rain 
in the nose. How to describe 
this beauty? Wood handle 
weather-grooved but still tight, 
easy to replace, gripless. 
Like Fred’s, the stepless, 
long-collared blade 
is extra thin and strangely shallow, 
its mysterious, misshapen tip: 
purposely forged? or—
workworn down to a gentle 
inverse curve, exactly opposite 
the pointed end you’d expect, 
not unlike a slice 
of homemade bread,
yin to a new shovel’s yang, 
as if a young man, 
this woman, could slowly smith 
the perfect tool 
against the fire inside 
a sweaty cotton shirt, 
file it in the giving grit 
of simple earth.

with gratitude to my old neighbor and friend,

Fred Wahlert of Brush, Colorado

Roommates

Hildegard is seventeen, or maybe six-.
She helped me raise three kids,
watched men come and go, hissed
either way: hello, good riddance.
Like true roommates, we don’t kiss
or cuddle. Sadly, I’m slightly allergic
so only scratch her ears and chin, 
tolerate her needled love nips,
wash before I touch my eyes and itch,
periodically brush her coat, let her in
and out to prowl night’s holey pockets
and ward off that other cat who likes to piss
on our threshold. Little bitch. Hilde
knows I love her: I scoop her shit,
meow back when she wants to chit
chat, don’t scold when I step in her vomit.
Like me, she’s gotten fat, likes to sit
upright like old Hotei and slowly lick
her round belly. It swings when she skits
across the floor, and her eyes, sky slits,
are fading strangely: ghostly, distant.
Perhaps she’s going blind, but not decrepit,
not yet. Last week, before a 5 day trip,
she went missing getting her night fix.
I meowed from the porch, across the mint,
and she returned the call from her pit
beneath the porch, behind the lattice.
Her eyes burned yellow, that spectral glint
of flashlight. Here, kitty, kitty. She wouldn’t. 
Under the steps, on sore knees, I flashlit 
my waggling finger tips, luring her with 
touch. That is all it took. She came, slid
against my sharp edges, her catnip.

Hagstone

On the beach we all have a knack for something.
My son in law skips stones six leaps across a thinning surf.
My husband harbors inner heat despite the wind.
With ease I find black stones with holes clear through
where witches live, my daughter says, and laughs.
Her gifted ears are fine tuned to tumbling staffs
of waves crashing in multi-phonic whispers and roars.
Harmonics hum along this stretch of sand, lost on me.
My ever gulping pupils ignore my poor ears, grow 
lost in mirages of hands and feet burning in the campfire,
wood mimicking bone, an archeology of grain 
that striates everything, as though the whole
earth were breathing inside a set of giant, fractal ribs
spinning out the endless chests of gulls, men, fish,
metastasized hotels, pretty cages glowing along 
the coast like mammoth corpses or gum-receded teeth. 
Red logs remind me how many degrees my bones
will reach on the path to ash, ash my family may choose
to suspend in blown glass, spun globes to place on desks
as paperweights, or shelves as funerary art or shrines
beneath thangkas of Tapihritsa where I may serve
as a reminder, a gutted clock. Perched on a mirror base, 
plugged in, LED lit, five alternating colored lights 
shining through what’s left of me, a tiny spiral galaxy— 
starry crumbs of my body glowing in vitreous space 
like Tibetan thigles—to everyone’s surprise I will be 
not quite a comfort, not quite discomfiting.