Rather than escaping,
this land accepts itself;
thus it is gentle and harsh,
vulnerable and saved.

Day opens with my elbow resting
On a wooden table

Cutting corners because that’s all we have to cut,
pulling ourselves through the needle’s eye

So listen.

You have to change.

You have to stop being yourself.

Blood wants an angel but all it has is Monday,
my mother

Even people can make u-turns, you said,
and I spent the first day doing just that.

I wake dreaming of Rome
and find my body
in another place.

winding itself down a dark alleyway
when dusk was most dusk and threatening
day with never returning …

Tim Johnson, you are dead
though we spent Christmas together
many years ago …

It’s spring
and the deer that died on the ice
amid a stippling
of bloody paw prints …