today I will choose
the new calf black against green grass
over the six o’clock news, voices
.
too shrill, and I will choose to
notice the rabbit grazing on
.
the well house, soft ears alert.
Author Archives: Natalie
99. he died
.
saturday stretched across decades, snapping in
around memories better left dormant,
one hour as long as the drawn gun lifting
to point, the sigh and quickly
missed lunge.
some thoughts own every space left
between seconds, claiming a self
well lost, inviting
redemptive desire –
that impossible movement
of forgiveness, yet
never granting that which be so
desperately
needed.
.
what a day –
drinking tea at the
table, windblown snow rising
outside the glass.
98. unborn children
.
yesterday watching ducks placid
on the pond i thought
of my unborn children,
.
the odd tilt poised
for a smile in one boy’s green eye,
.
the blowsy woman in the port
terminal whom I
gave my little girl to,
.
all well pleased though I
did wonder: quite a different
landscape than my casual
.
broken fingernails
and work boots, D’s carelessly
owned competence.
.
i thought about the way
the second boy and i spoke
without speaking.
.
how I miss him.
.
I often sit alone now
the placid ducks
crumbs.
97. desert rain
.
after thunderstorms,
hoof prints erased,
paths stripped, sinuous
racetracks chase down to the
arroyo’s raw gash
.
and patches of damp
squat stubbornly beneath
brush, hoarding their
very existence.
.
96. lost moments
.
some ideas
cause sideslips and pointless
wandering, turn otherwise
normal hours bruise grey
rubbing their fog feet
against my heart, wearing holes
in a struggling muscle.
.
where do you put them?
how do you shoe their wispy
feet or make them feel
at home?
95. fog
.
a pelt of thick fog
white as christmas woke with me
just before dawn, moving
.
slowly, restlessly
against the brittle branches
of thorn acacia bushes.
those branches tore
bits off the fog and
the fog healed itself
.
over and over.
94. pain
93. naming a hill
.
walking past this hill I think
the split hill because
.
it is split, a dike
of igneous rock unique
birthmark of a handsome hill.
.
never do I think, there –
that Jenkins, I bet he’d have
liked that his name has been
laid on this hill. it mirrors
the basis of him: two faced.
.
why do you
want to be remembered as
forgotten. so afraid you mean
nothing, why not embody instead
that which you wish you were.
why not live a life as
big as the hill?
.
everyone
would remember you then and
you would not care,
complete.
.
92. spoons
91. ice fishing
.
remember now the
shot crack as branches shatter
from cold, the whale-voice
.
of ice bending beyond
its tolerance. remember
the dark water, chips
.
in the ice fishing
hole catching against filament,
and the scratching
.
slush and squeak of snow
(oh, that crunch-creak
of snow) and the voice
.
of arctic stillness
descending with twilight, words
like orchestral coughs,
.
scandalous then, so
unnecessary. do you
remember fishing?
.
orphan poems 