Chattering squirrel, I beg you hear
This quiet sonnet plead your leave.
Yes, you and I count each sincere,
Refusing, Dylanesque, to grieve.
I offer you the whisky jar,
A hit of **** or mushroom caps.
Cold day is slanting into dark.
If I were younger, there'd be apps.
I couldn't write this, maybe you
Began it and I snagged this line.
What moves will drop, when time is due,
The snow, the leaves, your mind and mine.
No more space left for barking here,
Scorched words an antidote to fear.

What isn't here, not in these lines,
You have the right to see, and more
Than that, discover, touch
As it blooms.
Poem.

Lee's dumbstruck seeing hung
Beneath the light
Her dress, a wig the color
Of her hair, her shoes--
The marionette he wanted.
He'd spent some time on this,
Had set the stage then texted
Please come get your ****,
Garage unlocked.

And  had he thought
Helena, by her now--too late
To shield her eyes--
Would understand such hate
At five years old?
"Is that you, mom?"
"I guess it is.  Your
Daddy's mad."

She held back tears, undressed
The doll except the hair,
Then cut it down while standing on
The set of steps he no doubt used
To raise it there
And dropped it in the trunk
Of her Toyota, unsure
What else to do with it,
Collected all the dross
She carried in for seven years,
Before and while things
Went to hell.

A madam in her house breeds fear,
Long list from halls of government.
Wild music flowers night its ear,
Played rough enough blue words come bent
From queens and jesters, jack and jill,
Buck dancing Appalachian child,
A delta path that winds uphill,
To Corinth, where the rocks lay piled.
Black Jesus clogs at Nellie's house,
Trades in his sandals, blesses feet
That dance in air while lancers joust
On what were never quite white sheets.
Some unwashed sinner sheds her skin,
Makes men of boys and boys of men.

Downhill on a cool morning
With a fresh cut load
Of logs for the mill
The brakes went out
On the old truck
With its nonredundant lines.
No stopping it my father
Double clutched and geared down,
Steered across a road ditch
Deep enough to bounce us
High above the seat,
While I in childish innocence believed
He knew what to do,
And he did, as well as anyone could
Under the circumstances.
The chains and come-a-longs
And standards held, tires didn't
Burst, and we made our way
Slowly to the mill yard, unloaded
On the ground and spent the afternoon
Soldering that breached brake line,
Refilling it with fluid and bleeding it.

She's kept so many keys, cut long
Ago to doors and boxes, locks
On gates and diaries, on wrong
Or bad directions, wind-up clocks
Long stopped and not remembered well,
That maybe should be thrown away,
Though skeletons will sometimes sell
In sidewalk sales on judgement day.
Increasingly, the future's picked
From options found along the road--
Reaffirmation, habits kicked,
A heart that bears a heavy load.
Kind words prove yet her greatest spell,
Her keys cast in the wishing well.