The half-light before sunrise flattens the field,

doesn’t leave shadows yet, draws the road

with graphite stillness, the flat mesquites

that spike against the toneless sky, fences

as monochromatic as the memory of pain.

Watching for mule deer is the main thing,

because they are as gray as the hill

at times like these, will leap in front of you

with wild desperation, some mislaid instinct,

their eyes a flash in the headlights

before the quick blur of sharp hooves and 

splintering bones as thin as a bird’s. 

The dented front will tell it, the stiff short hairs

hanging off the curve of the bumper.

The suffering thing you don’t know what to do with.

The way you’ll walk back, hoping no one will know it was you.

I’ve heard that, if you know you’re going to hit one,

you should accelerate right before you do, 

so that the car will hunker like a cat

and glance it up across the hood, increasing your chance

of survival, if not the deer’s.

It must be this light– it’s the light that does it to us.

Bright enough to show the form of the world

without giving any definition to it. 

The way the early morning makes no promises,

might as well tell that nothing at all is there:

not the car’s headlights fading into the gray light,

or the road that looks like it closes behind you.

Not the invisible city that soon the sun will rise over.

Not the brokenness you leave behind 

that carries your name.

Every day I think you have to talk to her.

But mornings go on blithely, sinus rhythm

louder than my will. My tongue takes

no part – I give her a book, my heart

loves books. I find it hidden under

the gall bladder. I show her Metasequoia,

teach the term invagination – she reaches

up to hush that lullabye. My heart wants

her blood to be the thing she never
thinks of, unconscious rush. My heart 

will not become another organ – 

oh, uterus, my heart does not wish

her future to unfold the way you have.

She wants to chatter with the other hearts,

swinging in their pericardia, giggling
in those heart-hammocks, eat cinnamon

candies while they dip tampons into red
Kool-Aid, learn this new term – staunch.

and this I’ve never told anyone—

the winter after we bought the house

I took you down to the creek 

which seemed safe enough

when I was young

Not quite three,  I guess

you didn’t know the terror of stop

(you rarely learn things that aren’t 

shouted) and I didn’t have the breath for it

slipping on mud walls where footpaths used to

ease towards the water, lazy barefoot steps

between weeds and rock patio, beer cans and

graffiti, puddles cupped in rocks where we drowned

minnows, trails I knew by taste

on my silt-caked toes

Once, I thought you could grow up

this way.  That I’d teach you the lingo 

of cicadas, the sanctity of creek-stink

the way that trees hold down the dark 

even at noon, the way things slither and crawl

how currents     tug, but not enough 

to scare you (as long as it hasn’t been raining

too much, like when August storms in, the way the water 

eats at the meadow then, erases it, and keeps coming

like everything you know about boundaries 

is ignorance, like how they didn’t tell me

boys died in that water, goofing those summer

swells, they only said be careful

 it’s deeper than it looks) I should have listened

to a mother’s instinct

he’s too little, no one knows

where we’re going, maybe February is different

maybe things have changed

the way the house has 

bigger cracks

smaller rooms, and all the ghosts gone quiet 

in the years that I’ve been gone  but I was full 

of everything I had yet to show you I was once

a girl 

gliding 

down 

the spine of a frozen creek

an initiate

in the secret middle 

world 

between 

 earth tree bones       and sky

once I walked in the crystal palace quiet

of suspended life—

I knew what magic was

and I wanted you to know it, too.  

But you are not me.

You tend to play inside, now, and how can I tell you

that childhood has a way of not staying 

how you left it, that things erode, give out

like trails gnawed down to edges, that you

sometimes find yourself alone

stomping inches in the snow, while your mother learns

that fear tastes mud-cold, like creek ice

that feet can forget how to speak

to the ground once you step away

that time

like falling 

happens only in the one direction. 

Late August. The last dregs of summer pour out

in murky and tepid sunlight. It lingers briefly over

immiscible surfaces, glistening. Another year

ruined. You are missed by all the places you bruised

with your love and your leave-taking. Numbed, plumb

full of treachery I am pulled down and dawn

to dusk must drag the depths of memory

for stray remnants

or traces

of you. Everything once luminous now emerges

morbidly tumescent,

tear-logged

misshapen. Each time I resurface

my gradually unhinging

bones clink

clatter, rush forward to scoop up

anything I have retrieved

(scum shell salt silt)

wailing out with gratitude. This can’t be it,

this can’t be it, this can’t be it. I wring

my grief each time I weep.

Whet the heart with every blink and breath.

We found them after the tree trimmers

had loaded up their machines and gone—

two baby sparrows in the grass, tumbled 

like ripe fruit. We placed a shoebox on a heating 

pad, lined it with soft cloth, and watched them 

squeak and squirm, all purplish crepe skin, 

bulging eyes shut. Our mother promised us 

she’d feed them when it was time to go to school, 

sugar water squeezed from a tiny dropper 

into even tinier beaks. I picture her kneeling 

over the box every two hours, laboring to save

what could not possibly be saved. Twenty years 

later, her pale limbs swollen and still under a light

blue blanket, we too labor, squeezing water 

from pink sponges into her slack mouth, more 

of it dribbling out than in, love compelling us, 

as it does, through the motions of giving life, 

as though death had not already made its claim.

True that tenderness never stopped 

a bomb, got a man elected 

president, or netted billions 

in market shares. But when

my father stands in the wedge

between car and car door,

clutching the frame and trembling,

and my brother positions the wheelchair

behind him, grasps him under the arms,

guides him into the nylon seat

for the hundredth time as gently

and unhurried as the first,

I want to bow down.

two chickadees burn
a path through air

from the feeder suspended
on its frozen pole, cloaked

in shade, to bare twigs
of dogwood, doused

with sun.  back and forth.
taking turns. or is there

just one bird, tethered
to hunger?  plunging

each time into darkness
then winging back

to light where it cracks
and chews and prepares

for the next descent.

We skip through woods,

Scraped knees down a dirt path,

Play wedding with twisted twigs

For rings and altars of pine bark

Sticky with sap.

We play bride in little girl bodies

Between regatta and swimming,

The procession of the day laid out

In neat little hours, boxes checked,

Holding ghost hands.

We climb log fortresses and slide

Down zip lines through treetops

Until the bugs evening bite and

I wonder if the same mosquito

Tastes us three, does it make us

Sisters?