Jewelweed
Red haw hog apple much-branched
shrubs and small trees we
discovered a row of old theatre seats red velvet
and smoked and followed all day through binoculars birds
that shone like earrings.
was the cinematic effect
we loaded those seats up cursing
and dragging delivered them slantwise
onto the porch.
*
She might
in her sleeve-
less white
night
gown
wake up
with it
stuck
to her arm
That egg
My sister
said
she grew
afraid
to sleep
by me
I bled
too much
She pictured
an egg
the size
of a pearl
but
she loved
me I
was still
enduring
my night-
mares
Move
over
on your
towel
*
I grew lilies from scales knew whip and tongue graft grew my mother’s touch-me-not from seed that flew at Old Man’s Creek when capsules brushed sit here she’d say and watch the leaves we watched her comb she was a woman nothing my father said the entire history of beauty could have prepared him for sit here it was supposed to be the Leonid Meteors the night a neighbor dog ate our spike-tailed kittens that had just got their sea legs and it snowed in October
The stars did not depart for which we’d lugged that relic home the ferns turned blue in a shell of ice the last wild roses held one note I found that dog where he’d tried to claw out after he’d been buried after he’d been shot a thickness of grit on his wildering eyes where he tried to claw out where snowbells grew and the worst untruth that had ever been told was the one about goodness directing the earth
But we spoke of the killing frost and a silver thaw took the tops off the fir trees.
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