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Melt

ice recedes

the solid white

pocks, goes white to gray

gray to film to puddled

puddled to lace

between river rock bottom & ice top

a melt hole grows

a dark space shows

cold winter air

ice above, water below

silent ice loosens to chortling water

yellow pebbles

water-churned rocks & stones

melt hole joins melt hole

ice recedes

land wears no more snow

no more winter

river water as cold as ice

Wild Life

the river ice is half gone, a white

field punctured by dark holes

lace edged, daily longer & wider

thick slabs undercut with melt

shallow chuckling water ripples

over yellow stones, rubs & rives

at fallen trees, worn boulders

invisible fish, & newts, frog spawn

skims, & stopping to drink, a fisher

a bobcat, brown bear & deer,

raccoon & skunk, rabbit & mouse

turkey & grouse, all those whose

prints would name them, were

humans outdoors, but they’re not

turkeys

four wild turkeys

swashbuckle & bob

thru deep snow

where from? 

where to?

does a wild turkey

have a home base?

or is it move along

taste & see

& move along

settle here a while

a night 

& move along

Jan 13 2026

the two gray squirrels 

might be puppet strung

bound bound bound 

halt on two back feet

nose at ice-furred snow 

survey stubbled field

bound bound bound

Bristol Cliffs

driver door wide open, someone

piles bricks on the gas pedal, turns

the key, pops the clutch, & dives

sideways into dry dirt, gravel, weeds

while the car shoots forward & tips

down the slope, bounces off rocks

& carves divots in trees, whump

crackle, metal dimples & groans

another used-up ride the woods

kindly clothes & claims as its own

Minutiae

in one liminal patch

I find Morchella americana

twenty-two morels

such labyrinthine folds

& Arisaema triphyllum

a jack-in-the-pulpit

its folded-over hood still

hiding its striped interior

they emerge beside

dread invasives — garlic

mustard, dame’s rocket —

the few greens I’m willing

to pull, as if I ruled

this wild, this woods rim

where I heap cat litter

& tissues & egg shells

heaps I hide under

wood chips gleaned

from trees I’ve downed

without me these

two acres would soon

carpet my house

Small Sounds from the Kitchen

I listen three nights

when a creature

not one of the three of us

prowls the dark

until one morning

a scratch, a scrape

becomes my cat

carrying a mouse

the tail dangles

a white neck shines

the cat trots outside

my other cat follows

the end is a different story

Such Is

the burden of driving the hundred miles

to visit friends or family, to consult on a project 

— that length of time, those dangerous roads — 

so one stays home, looks out the same windows

onto the same trees, grass, driveway, road

yet what comfort the known brings, the one mug

filled with the favorite tea . . . I am most at risk

between five & seven am, the time when I wake

& make tea & read headlines reporting the latest

obscenities — South Carolina executes a man

by firing squad, Israel kills 87 Palestinians

our dumb fuck president spews nonsense

enables morons, deports & kills people — 

yet the day begins, I divert myself, Homer

diverts me, my ignorance consoles me

1964

the morning after my high school graduation

a moving van pulls up out front

of our New Jersey house

                                             United! it proclaims

& while movers maneuver

the contents of our house down the walk

up the ramp into the dark tunnel

                                                         stacked with blankets

                                                         strung with belts

& while my mother supervises

the know-it-all yes’m no’m blue-jumpsuited crew

I assemble a collection

of what I might need for the rest of my life

                                                                           I’m seventeen

& I’m not moving to DC though she thinks I am

no, today is I win (& lose), game over

get out, get out for good

drive away in my two-door pale-blue Pontiac

                                                                               dressed in black

& strung with pearls, it takes her

six weeks to find me cleaning a toilet in a stranger’s house

no, I won’t come with you, won’t pretend

you have any hold over me, won’t endure

one more day of your husband’s (my father’s) 

drug- & drink-addled rage

                                             she drives off

I pass another night deep in the park, locked in my car