i walked the levee that
separated the marsh and the river.

a cold front migrating,
not unpleasant,
clouded dense gray,
hardly a call to the winter that
must follow, rather an invitation.

bands of southward fowl
had settle over night,
the sound of them
carried on the wind,
audible a mile below the ditches
i walked towards.

hoping to list, blue teal, scaup,
mallard, canada, red head
and ring necked,
and not a hundred yards away,
one peregrine over head.

at the sound
of my approach,
unseen below the lip of the levee,
ten thousand birds
of a dozen different stripes
took to flight, heaving to the sky,
as if the earth had exploded before me
and for minutes,
great groups departed noisy,
again and again
until the marsh fell quiet.

and there was little remaining
but scattered feathers
floating on the still waters.

i strain to understand
but love all the more
the hill where the soldiers are buried
within earshot of the steel rails,
the trail to market across the broad
fields of winneshiek’s prairie,
his daily walk now the dusty roads i drive.

tell me stories about a hero's death,
rewarded sleep deep in sacred ground,
and how dying is the easiest of things
for even the faint of heart can be heroric
and i will be as stubborn as a cartridge pouch.

i fail to understand,
calling to mind
past bad predictions of better futures,
cursing and excusing war
and the ancient virtue of how to die.
nobody makes songs of mangled limbs
and expect the young to answer
for that they must sing of glorious sacrifice
to stir the patriot as god's own will.

across the tops of austere military headstone
i look to the north toward the valley of bekaaniba,
as a black sparrow hawk test the thermals
nothing escaping its sharp eye,
nothing that crawls or walks or makes war.

while below in bright afternoon light and easy breeze
surrendering to the smell of earth, farm,
freshly mown grass and hyssop,
i stand to pay homage
and wonder.

i strain to understand
but love them all the more.

you will not be known
for the coins in your pocket
but by the fertility of your garden
planted watered and weeded,
sown by hands that know what it means
to plant seeds.

known for the labor of gathering tools
and brick and mortar
to repair weaknesses in walls
protecting you, your issue,
your garden.

you will be known
for the teaching of children.
small voices understanding
the silence found between
the pencil's tip and the page.
for seeing the vague gray smear,
erasure on paper,
as the beginning of beautiful questions.

for your care as learned and learner.
wishing to meet that which advances towards you,
inexhaustible, examined thoughtfully,
woven within you, as root through loam
undeniable.

known by the blood that you honor and create,
by who you stand with and before,
by the immense luxury of witnessing
growth most vital.

you will not be known
for the coins in your pocket.
coins are numbers likely to be deleted
for the forgiving of the coins,
but for a garden of good and perfect sleep,
as one who tended his delights and his children.

and knowing the forgiveness in their nature,
they will rise despite you,
because of you.

there shall be for me
prayer this evening
that manages saying little
yet filling a desire
that will not be put off.

effortless prayer
by bandy stream
beginning without plan,
simply beginning,
and joining to me,
a rough hewn faith,
smell of a wet god,
the sand the stream
springs from.

my prayer
and the creek flows,
a voiceless plea
seeking nothing.
grateful to stand
in the pale light,
empty and small
and wanted.

the prayer
of a doubting man,
casting about for answers
grown comfortable
letting question
reside elsewhere.

humbled that my prayer
joins night song,
a prayer with each
pulse of my blood,
constant until i stop praying.

we walk the path to the spring
where the waters come constant
from the ground unfreezing
warm enough for duckweed to thrive
even in blue winter,
deep with snow.

the air holds few sounds,
the snap and tumble of tree limb,
river's crashing iced sheets,
the click and kew of the junco,
wind, amplified one hundred fold
razor sharp in the cold.

how does the waters know
who told it; here.
it's here that you will rise,
at the end of a path in a small cleft,
said by locals to be the gathering
place of the ancients, the fairies
and the dead who died before their time?

we come to the spring and beside it
as deep in the snow
as we are in its mysteries,
we become a part of the story
reassured that the promise
of the thaw is as constant
as the coming march sun
and the ever flowing water
at our feet.

i step on the bare earth
and have kept quiet ever since,
afraid my words would
shear the history
that stands among us,

there is nothing between me and the sun,
yet i hear obsolete calls to dominion,
becoming the rituals of oils,
the bottles of the high priest
at his battle ground,
    
and his religion, the sword, the horror
of which settles questions better
than it answers them,
should be turned inward if
it weren't for the immense sadness
of our grieving diety.

i have escaped by roving for now
through a lush country,
green beyond belief in itself, where
the sweet root calls as birds in
summer heat and peace is an
underwhelming joy,

but i won't stand forever
i can't, it will on its own,
rise and fall determined
by our bleeding needs,
determined by the distance between
footfalls placed
the worth of all worths.

hard scrabble taught
small as the properly poor,
it is a shame how she looked
like a dead moth spread winged,
taped to a piece of wax paper,
taken to school and pinned down.

festered in a blue black
skin, those few visible examples
of the love thrown at her unwashed.
nobody, but nobody would plan
to spill so much in so small a space,
but she did, with a fog in her eye
as she did it, and as hard as i wanted to try,
i couldn’t make eye contact.

what came next was what
she remembered to pack, along with some
missing skin. i wished it were mine.
i’d gladly take it upon me, and she could
be scot free pretending to be
any number of wild things.

but she sat with me,
frozen backward looking,
explaining with awkward words
and punctured theme,
as i wrote fresh notes for god, like clean snow.

nothing prepared me for the sudden absence,
the dead moth freed of the unpinned wax paper.
as i cleaned the spill with long forms and reports
i was grateful i tried to look in her eyes.
tired in the moment to be there still,
one man choosing to pray.