For my Montgomery friends

Montgomery, Alabama_______________________________________


The early places, the first places
seep into the skin and mind and heart
like humidity into a salt box
until the salt cannot be dried nor the water extracted
and both remain, for better or worse,
in a bonded clump.
Rules and tradition form a tangle that mixes
with overgrown vegetation, oppressive heat,
and knotted at the center of the muddle is the most
peculiar of the Southern flora,
the family tree.
Branch after branch
(some bearing no resemblance whatsoever to any other)
drops down like Banyan roots
disparate and inescapable.
Years later,
when the tangle is unknotted,
a breeze blows through the opened spaces
sending words and memory
like delicate sticks and leaves
scittering across the page…

For Jimmy and Pensacola

For Jimmy (Pensacola)

When we are older--
limping--
we come home
to some memory we must recapture,
some evening in childhood
with twilight shining purple
like light through stained glass
some late night fog
threading its way through pecan
or scrub oak limbs
that we have to feel and smell
before we can breathe
again
in peace…

For my Seaside friends

Crossing 30-A
when the morning leaks
across the sand

--when turquoise water
leaves behind a baby sand dollar

and no one else is there to find it--

Walking with coffee
when the sun first curves
across the sign
at Seagrove Market

Passing Dogwood
and Azalea—
lanes of live oaks
scattering shadow and light
(like a sun-feather boa
flipping
across
my chest)

Waiting on bare feet
for Sundog Books
to yawn awake
and let me in…

To Judy

Years

float like pale ribbons

between us

so sheer

they blow diaphanous the air

woven with filaments

of people and places,

poems and passions

past and present

transparent and strong

dangling

tangling

across time and place,

laced and jammed with

duties done and

undone

and still

we are

connected with words

spread across pages

reminding us of who we are

and have been

and how have you been?

and how do you live?

For Zachary

I love you in silence,

missing you across distances too great to span

except in spirit

like Keats’ gold, beaten to airy thinness

my connection to you is ethereal,

a shimmering umbilical

quivering through the air of intuition.

After Christmas

You are only moments gone.

We hear the sound of drifting engine as
you begin your journey back
to the other life you live so
                                       far away from home.

“And that’s just as it should be,” I explain.

Perplexed, the big yellow dog
moves to the window to gaze after you

“How are we to bear such sentimental hearts?” I ask her.
In answer, she turns away.

Wrapping ornaments
    in tissue and newsprint,
    I see drops
    hit holiday ads
    and delicate glass.

I close the last box softly
and write across the top
FRAGILE

hoping all will hold
safe
for another year.