poetry

after the evacuation order’s lifted

after the evacuation order’s lifted

when you first arrive home
after the town caught fire
things will look the same:

soft slabs of snow will mushroom
atop parked car roofs
and Christmas lights will still wrap trees

it’s not until you reach your kitchen
that the full import meets you –
your home still stands, thank God

and the firefighters and Aeolus –
and it stands at 45 degrees and falling.
one of you starts the pellet stove

while the other takes the truck to find more pellets
and free space heaters
and you quietly begin living a new way.

next you look at the gas stove (impotent)
and realize you haven’t means to boil water
and can’t drink what’s in the tap

so you forage for water, too, life stripped to its elements,
five-gallon jugs filled by a friend
in the next town west, where taps magically still flow clean

and now you learn to pour liter carafes
and even dainty cups after a day’s practice
from what’s usually your campsite stash.

when the large men clomp inside
in their Carhartts and work boots
big beards and cold toes

and give you back warm nights
and hot water, you push gifts into
their wide palms: candy canes and

chocolate bars, gushing thanks, and beer,
and it turns out one lives two blocks away
and his toddler and your little neighbor are friends.

and in the midst of all this confusion
so many new ways of doing/being
there’s also the dark knowledge

that your son’s kindergarten teacher’s home
is now just another smoldering pit
and your dog’s brother now has no yard to call his own,

and 500 neighbors don’t have these inconveniences
of gas and water to deal with now
because everything is gone

poetry

solstice eve

solstice eve

today the light still grows longer
spring exhales a last sigh of
cold grey rain
the meadows array themselves
in purple iris, orange wallflower,
golden banner, red paintbrush
blue mist penstemon
hot pink shooting star
readying for tomorrow’s solarbration
the wheel begins to creak and turn
our hearts begin to shift:
how to weather summer’s forge
how to keep calm hearts and attentive minds
when light goes white hot
and the cities burn
how to practice restraint when burning up
and wait like still water
how to have faith in humanity’s
capacity to survive and heal
how to rise up like a storm surge
when our movement is needed
may it be so

poetry

hot hands

hot hands

he puts a gentle hand on my back
and I wait for its removal
patient, then im-
itching for the heated weighted palm
to move its imprint
burning like a night opps image
sizzling into my psyche
can you please not touch me
I finally say, apologetic yet curt,
it’s just too hot