TURKEY VULTURE
The black wing
scythes the thermal
falling lower or rising

higher on the turn
of a feather.
Swooping low,

the bird scans the earth
for the dead
or the solitary.

Vulture, knife down,
probe deep, cut
these memories

so I can slice
the wind.

Bishop’s House Review

TRACKS
Winter gray, the sanderling
skitters along the receding wave,
probing bubbles for dinner.
A lone line of prints laces

the damp sand like veined leaves.
Others join the bird, their tracks
woven together in the ebbing.
The flock flees a surge,

leaving only the one.
Looking over its shoulder,
does the bird see its single
line of tracks, filling?

Bishop’s House Review

CARRYING YOUR ASHES HOME
Old tires are buried in a playground, or tied
by rope to a tree limb over the river
just waiting for a swing. My tires were worn
but lasted long enough to take you to the vet.

Filled with begonias, some are painted white, jagged teeth
like the ventricular tachycardia on your EKG.
Others are tossed into a ditch to collect rain water
and mosquitoes. Piles burn uncontrolled, the tumor
pressed on your heart. In August two-a-days, football players
step through tires snaked out on the ground.

With new tires, I carry you home.

Broken Plate

THE STREAM
Snow laces branches and melts
in the stream that slips
between shaded hills.
Quietly, it slides
past trout lily and snakes
around remnants of shattered
stills. Winding its way
through running cedar,
it passes the ivory
remains of deer season. Snow
softens the landscape
but cannot cover
the bared ribs.

Blueline

SOFTLY
Slip me
like silk
into one
demure
pouch so I’ll
can hear
the flight
of the migrating
ladybug, orca
sliding the drift
without echo
and I’ll
know
when you
leave.
The Bishop’s House Review

SNAPSHOTS
I

Small trailer, screened in porch, a door that sticks, brown couch, blue recliner,
coffee table. The husband, gray, thin, cyanotic lips, oxygen cannula around his
face. I have come to treat him. Strengthening exercises the doctor said.
The wife, warped by a muscle imbalance, useless arm akimbo. Despite their
problems, they manage, just like my parents I think. She showed me how to
increase the oxygen flow if he needs more. I know nothing of their life.

II

I pull into the drive by the ambulance. Gray body stretched on the floor, chair
out of place, she is screaming into the phone. “Come quick, Bill is dead” All
I knew was to hold her. Neighbors stop by, the police. “I didn’t do nothing,
I did the best I could,” she cries. Tried to get in touch with her son, but I was
shaking so hard I couldn’t dial. Someone goes to get him. The ambulance crew
gets information. Her parents finally come.

III

My father undergoing angioplasty, my mother sits alone in the wrong waiting
room, not even a volunteer to ask about family, any conversation to make
the time go faster. My parents told me not to come. A long day, the procedure
delayed. Finally someone finds her, everything has gone well. She asks for a
phone to call me. What were they thinking about me?

Iris

SLICES OF AUTUMN
Sunlight follows
the fallen poplar.
An understoried redbud
will take its place.

The pond’s muddied
edge unfolds a great egret:
a study in white.

The sun silvers
a spider’s final web,
the last light seen
when you close
the door.

The Cherry Blossom Review

THE PALED MOON IS ERASED
as sunflower yellows to morning.
A moth hides from day
under shaded bark. Wind
plucks a wisp of dandelion and nestles
it into grass. Summered heat distorts
distant poplars. Mimosa’s
dusk-scent settles on evening’s
folded leaves. The sun’s remnant,
a cloak of isolation,
covers me.

The Bishop’s House Review

MIST NET
The painted bunting cannot escape
the mesh. Wings and head tangled,
feet twisted in black net. It rests in the net,
begins to flutter at the bander’s approach.
Quietly, she encloses its wings in her hand.
Pulling the net from its feet, wings, head,
it flaps and pecks at her fingers, the angle
of the sun that drives it to flight fading for the day.
She places the rainbow bird in a white bag
Painted buntings have taken this route

since time has been measured. Only Archaeopteyx
can reveal if flight grew from a glide to another tree,
a hop to a branch. Its ancestors have seen the growth
and retreat of great ice, birds follow the same path
despite clear-cut forests and barrier islands

swept clean by Katrina. The bander
places a silver bracelet on its leg, measures
wing, tail, and bill. It rests for a moment
in the bander’s hand
this strange perch.

HEY OLD MAN
How come you work so hard to live? Home is a ragged trailer with TV for company. Maybe your brother comes over for awhile, or the grandkids leave their bikes in your yard. Every night, your daughter hooks you up to the fluid that mimics your kidneys. Each day you drag your weak leg to the naugahyde chair, fall in and drift between the sets of exercises I insist you do. I mark your name in the column that counts toward my quota.

You keep smokes close at hand, sit on the porch in a mildewed chair looking at the garden you can’t tend. Do you dream of planting pole beans when you doze in the morning sun? Wounds won’t heal, bacteria bloom like algae in your abdominal fluid. No nursing home will take you, dialysis costs too much, no money to be made. Your family signs for the surgery that takes one leg, then the other. Is hobbling to the shade to watch the kids play wiffle-ball in the gravel drive enough? Another surgery, this one to route blood to your rotting limb. I wish, “Give up.”