We live in the sunshine of our broken loves,
Where window curtains flow like pouring water from the aqueducts.

Sunlight is the memory of an old world, and we are just
Watchmakers who labor at the trumpets of time
As if to blow from the mouthpiece and unwind
The second hands and derelict hours of our luminous grief.
So too shines the scintilla of frost that covers the ancient wheat,
Snow falls like the listenings of lovers in the dark, and we are just
Cartographers of snowflakes, mapmakers of frozen eyes,
To zone the parallelogram of her strands of hair across the sky.

These and these and these
Were never ours.

Spring morning,
quiet. One coyote,
three deer
running in snow.

What else have I seen?
A sparrow hawk in mid-air ******
a robin, a sharp-shinned hawk catch
a rabbit in its talons.

A deaf mute in a pear tree.
Not one wolverine
in Utah or Italy.
Nor a famous samurai.

A young black bear
traverses the lawn in August.
Also quarks. Also oaks.
Do not disturb its progress!

A red fox
alert, no limp
flows silently
across the meadow.

First light, green tea.
A person thinking
epochs and eons.
A platoon of chickadees.

i see i saw i
thought of a cold winter storm
deer tracks in fresh snow

The calls for prayer

freeze and fall in empty streets --


as sacred snowflakes.