Walk

Lean in to slap
gnarled bark.

Palm scrapes
trees' solidity.

Bumblebees drift
cloud-slow.

How loud this town
has grown

with what's not worth saying.
Deafening shades of red,

blinding white chrome.
Hands fold in prayer

_____or are withdrawn --

malediction.  All
focus on a home

unaffordable
to those who were born before

cranes raised a roof
over her.

Domes and minarets
whip by.  I bow

my head at a window
past which folklore sped.

Dread dressed us in Nessus robes.
______Gifts none would ever ask for;

a voice could lift
bodies sore

bodies used
by thieves accused -- 

_____accused yet never tried.

Who are we to dye
bolts in vats and chat about the latest score?

Do not ask to be told
what's in store.

Harvest Dusk

Scarecrow, scarecrow, you stand alone.
Scarecrow, scarecrow, you have straw for toes.

Stuffing peeks through your chambray shirt.
Your beaten leather head hangs ever so low.

Are you low?  Low and lonely, old scarecrow?
What does the corn whisper when wind rustles from row

To row to row?  What does the corn say
when the wind rattles it slow?

Did it tell you a storm's on the way to make dirt dance?
Tell me, old scarecrow, what you know when you have a chance.

Inheritance

Bakelite box, nicotine yellow.
Lift the lid, the rings
are old; they were hers.

Not scattershot but neat,
nicely held in the folds
of brown velour.  Candlelight

shattered by diamonds, rainbow
at night.  She left them all to me.
She was not to be buried

with anything -- not a stitch
went with her.  Such is the revenge,
daughter, you shall have on the world:

You can't take anything with you.

Cinderella

Staircase wide, black.
It runs grandly up
to an amber sky
flecked with gold.

Once said among the old:
the prince was blind
in just such a way:
faces once met then would fade

upon leaving.  He could not fall in love.
Once the face beheld fell away
he could not, when again
he'd found it, match it

to memory.  So, too, names
were all the same, his mind for them
a helpless, frustrating
fog, light gray.  It was as though

he had to hold on to each
new soul by a marker
he'd laid:  a dark red frown,
a string of pearls, a glass shoe.

Were you to recall to him
the place and date you played
whist with his maid,
with luck he might place you.

So here is where, so long ago
he, frantic, stopped cold,
and with voracious eyes
watched torchlight dance on a gleaming toe.