Sometimes

I want to cry

Sometimes

I want to spit

In somebody's eye

Most of the time

I just ask myself

Why

Forbidden fruit

I work sweating in the hot sun at the house pulling weeds from the gravel, either sitting, there are so many I can sit quietly and pull from the space all around me for quite some time, or crouched in that sitting on your heels asiatic position. It's meditative. Sometimes they yield gently and I feel compassion. Sometimes I have to pull with all of my strength. Those are cathartic.

It's been hay weather. We raked the the strimmed hay from the banks into piles for our neighbor, to pitch fork onto his tractor's trailer to feed to his horse. The other day he'd helped our son tie together your rangy fig tree tree so that the laden branches wouldn't break. Today we had to tear off two of those branches that had broken in the wind anyway. Your five varieties of fig are bearing a lot this year. They've just now matured. Your four pear trees are also laden with more fruit than they have ever produced. Your three cherry trees have borne, but the fruit was probably enjoyed by the birds, thankfully because I don't know what I would have done with it all. Your multitude of raspberry and blackberry bushes and strawberry plants have been overcome with weeds. Your walnut is now enormous. The ancient apple trees that you so lovingly saved, pruned and nurtured back to life are full, as is the newer. Fortunately the vineyard is being cared for by the neighbor. The quince and apricot are probably bearing too, I haven't had the heart to look at those, or your plum tree. It's overwhelming and heartbreaking and all I can do to assuage the pain is yank weeds in the hot sun.

Sex is a promissory note

To return in kind
Ness that which
Has been offered
In love
An I.O.U.
Respect
Reciprocity
Relevance

The cards are on the table

An orangeglow sunset
Behind black hills
Beyond ochre lightshowered houses
And citron lit streets
Darkness broken
Sorting
Shuffling
Dealing
Kings Queens Jacks
Joker's wild
Inside warmglow windows
Shattered

Distant echoes

The devastating sound
Of footsteps
Rapidly retreating

Ricochet

In the middle of the night
When my son was an infant
I'd get back into bed
Having gone to the bathroom
Or let the cat out
Half an hour later
I'd just be drifting off to sleep
And he would awaken
Something having echoed
In his mind

The night my mother died
I'd gotten up and wandered
Into the living room
I saw the light on
In her bedroom
I reached for the door handle
Thinking I'd turn off her light
Then I thought
Nah, I'll wake her up
And she'll be angry
So I went back to bed

I don't remember hearing the shot
But something
Must have echoed in my mind
As the bullet lodged in hers

Goal!

I hear the shouts
Out the window
GOAL!
I think of the afternoon
Pacing nervously in front of the television
With your infant son in your arms
When you yelled GOAL!
At the top of your lungs
And terrified him
Into a bout of inconsolable crying
And think of the things
That made you happy
That gave you joy
And the terror you felt
When you knew
You were dying
That you could not express
That we could not express
Then the joy that you had given us