Poems

Sample Poems

Choptank bluegills take part in the creation of the world
from By Stone and Needle
(first published in WNC Magazine)

You couldn’t say bluegills create the stream.
Torn from the stream, they choke
on blazing air. And yet. Those nests,
those few dozen shallow divots together
pocking the creek bottom in dimples
rich with sunfish generations: changing
creekbed, reshaping foundation.
That steady fan-flow of air-
bearing water over eggs settled among
the pebbles, ever so slightly changing
the river’s braiding and unbraiding. That labor
of life: the work to work
with the current as it is and yet
to change it just enough, to manifest
a place a little better for bluegills, co-creating
the world in concert with oxygen exchange,
tectonic motion, that smashed and gash-
edged hubcap pinning down an immortal
plastic bag, the gravity of the moon, whirligig
beetles inscribing creek-skin with runes
written in water, whatever God you say. Flood
of protestors in the street’s torrent, choking
on blazing air. A woman stirring cut
onions over heat, changing them just enough
to turn their burning tears to something
a little more sweet. Fingers moving the pen, the keys,
the lever, and the air and ground
of our lives ever so slightly shifting
in response, recreated (ever so slightly) anew.
The fearful fact: it matters what you do.

Spouse, Assembling Honey Frames
from Larvae of the Nearest Stars

I can keep, or fail to keep, the honeybees. Can bring them
water, fresh frames to hold the freight
of nectar, condensed and fanned to heavy honey.
Can bear them sugar, re-stack them after storm.
Can wade into the hum of the swarm to make
a desperate split, to keep the bees home. Can
mourn them when they weaken, when they die,
can bite back panic when they pierce the veil,
can take the hot hair-wire of the sting,
the sick shiver of the spreading venom.

But I can’t build. Power tools stalk me with death
in their red eyes, saws cant their paired teeth
up toward my foot, nails twist awry. It’s he,
who never wanted bees, who builds the hives,
the boxes with their corners clean and square,
the lightwood frames around the slender screens
of wax foundation, wax the bees will shape
into cells and fill with honey, a drop
for every ten thousand blooms stroked
and ravished, almost too sweet to bear.

He does what he always has: checks
the details, trues up the ends, fits the pins
and staples, drives the tacks, secures
the fragile frames made to store blackberry
blossom, ephemeral clover, the sticky syrup
of tulip poplar, sourwood’s buttery gold–
summer’s distillation of the marriage
of bee and nectary, performed anew each time
in endlessly repeated celebration
to hold the great, astounding weight
of all earth’s mortal sweetness. And they will.