Nights, I hear barn owls calling,
shrill as hunger stripped bare—
and think of the onion farmer
from east of the mountains, his broad,
exhausted body on my massage table,
the owl he told me screamed
all winter from his barn rafters.
Like a Friend
You are hung safely in the past now,
fixed in the frame of the photograph
from that day in the mountains when I was afraid
but you went right in, trusting your body
to the body of the lake, its coldness
that held you even as the bottom dropped
away. I’d like to remember you
floating in the green world
of the water, the heavens broken open
like a vault above us, and summer
pouring through.
Admissions
Making You Noise
The Sound When the Held Note Ceases
Tonight I contemplate, thirty years late,
his dark head cradled in my lap,
teen-aged boy from band snuck back with me
to our grade school playground,
middle of a bitter night,
and him telling me he’d been adopted
twice, and me considering the mother
who gave him up, one who died
when he was two, and finally one who lasted,
her voice cool when I’d called
for him that afternoon.