The newborn and the dead are blessed
with clean slates
but in between look closely at the withered leaf
lifelines of wisdom in a wrinkled surface
it rattles in the wounds of my father’s vaulted trauma
in mother’s bruises left by the mournful immigrant
it signals me in junkie graveyards
to my brother’s accidental ashes
marks the sweetness of my child leaving home
and the creep of late autumn
it rattles in the grieving wind
that’s how it calls me
makes me shiver like the first time
I heard Joshua Bell’s violin
vibrations before the show
how it tuned me to welcome
love and love and
love
like blueberries plump
on the bush stain my fingers
and around my mouth
and tongue purple and I say
more more and gobble
gobble
that horse in the meadow
brown eyes and august mane
stamped his hoof at me
stamped his hoof again.
