The Wild Voice

On your birthday, I plant nothing new. I weed around the lavender

On scan day, rain begins before the alarm. The forecast calls it ordinary:

Rain lays a gray glaze along the lane. Gate chains shake.

Go slow on the old road home. Low stone walls hold snow in their broken rows.

At Rhossili, the tide withdraws far enough to alter distance. Wet sand holds the sky.

A thin moon remains above the eastern roofs, late to leave

The window has written its pale breath on the glass. In the yard, one maple

Beside the tulips, her garden gloves keep the shape of two resting hands.

Confetti keeps falling after the players stop running. One team lifts the cup.

All morning the river refused us. The float drifted. The line snagged willow.

By August the sunflower is taller than the fence and less interested in us.

For twenty minutes the path climbs through white air. No valley, no destination,

At the trailhead the sky is certain. Halfway up, certainty closes. Cloud enters through the pines.

The ocean has moved its furniture, leaving wet sand, three green ropes of weed,

Find the match in the kitchen drawer. Invite no grand metaphor yet. Remember how quickly one spark travels.

Fresh snow on the rail— a red bird waits while one wing rests under the eave.

Red bird on the fence— a butterfly opens noon above the milkweed.

North of us, gardens hold their longest evening. Here the sun leaves early. We button coats at the harbor

At nine the garden is still visible, though supper has been cleared away. A moth works the lavender.

The whistle sends us climbing from blue water into evening. Wet feet slap concrete.

At 3:14 every phone sounds. The river has crossed the lower road. Move uphill now.

The roof stayed on. The old elm did not. Its roots lifted dark earth

At the red light, the engine warms my knees. A child in the next car

All winter the motorcycle waits beneath a grey cover. I turn the wheels by hand,

Eight tail-lights mark the dark, each one keeping the next in sight. No speeches at sixty miles an hour.

The sign says home is twenty miles. I choose the road that makes it forty. Past the quarry,

Rain needles the visor until every headlight flowers. The lane line disappears,

Helmet buckled. Gloves pulled tight. One boot testing gravel.

One apple remains at the top of the tree, red against November,

The November field is not empty. Roots hold summer's instructions. Mice stitch tunnels under frost.

Mud dried on the boots in maps of the north field. One lace had been knotted twice.

The gate he built still drags one corner through the dust. Lift, then push,

He read weather in swallows, in the ache of one knee, in cattle turning backs to rain.

He walked the fence at evening, not because the wire had changed, but because wind, cattle,

His hat remains on the peg, rain-dark at the brim, a pale line where the sun

Before sunrise, the barn light came on because he did. Cattle shifted in the dark.

The horse turns once at the familiar whistle, then lowers its head.

He knew each field by the way rain stood in it, which gate sagged,

After the guns, the field made no speech. It lifted poppies

Birches bend their bright backs. Cedars click and call. Dry grasses drag their green sleeves

I folded yesterday's bad news into a small white boat and set it on the gutter stream.

The moon owns nothing. Not the pale road, not the pond's open hand,

Soft shoes on stone, slow steps through sleep— the sea slips silver

All night the rain keeps the ledger, counting each roof tile twice, tapping the gutter for answers,

Summer is the season that forgets to end on time—it lingers at the shore like a guest who loves your house more than you do.

I will sit on your laptop at the worst possible time. I will bring you a dead bird and expect applause.

The horse knows something about running that we've forgotten—how the whole body becomes the verb.

Fire knows one thing: how to eat. It eats wood. It eats paper.

The mountain doesn't care that you're climbing it. It was here before your species.

The tulips don't know it's still cold. Or they know and they don't care.

I know you don't want a poem about a spider. But consider.

It's raining again and I have nowhere to be angry about it.

The birds don't care that you're trying to sleep. They have a concert.

The ocean doesn't care that you're watching. This is what makes it worth watching.

The thing about winter is that it's honest. No leaves to hide behind.

June gives us the longest day and we still waste most of it talking about the weather.

The maples don't grieve. That's the first lesson.

August is a thief who comes dressed as a gift: the peach at its most golden

Flowers, I have learned, are not about beauty. They are about the argument

Spring doesn't arrive. It trespasses— one crocus first,

The earth is trying something underneath— you feel it in the softness of the ground, a stirring, like a sleeper holding breath

After the rainfall, a snail draws its silver line across the stone step.