Stanzaic Stylings

TWO WOMEN IN A CAFÉ TALKING Two women in a cafe talking honestly. "...like an attempt  to murder," one said. The sun lifted its mane behind the clouds. "More like an attempt at suicide," replied the second, and when she laughed, her front tooth wiggled. A soft drizzle rainbowed down the window. "...an attempt at love," answered the first and a blue river opened a path within the clouds. "Yes, that's it. An attempt at love."

THIS IS HOW YOU COMPOSE A LOVE POEM The sparrow hawk in the tree is not who I am, lemon seed, flicker brush, the decay of skunk grass.   I follow to where the path goes through the belly of bark into the skinny trail of hammer thronged ants,   wheel bird beetles and a flourish of sapsucker bees. Here the way is blocked, here the way continues,   This is how you compose a love poem from the sighting  of a bird on a tree near the cone heads and boulders,   the end of a plain and a playing field, a thin waterway,  the land of flesh eating darters and mud bottom bass.

THE GHOST TREE The ghost tree reflected in the window white as blood-free linen does not move to the beat of the wind. It forms no shadow, makes no nest for a family of squirrels, no flurry of leaves, no glitter of sunlight, nothing compromised, nothing overridden.   We look to the street to find its nature, see only yellowing blossoms on young trees a starting of green, but the ghost tree is nowhere. This is how it is when it is nothing at all.   Later we hear the scraping of feet, the breathing of air when the wind stops, the sudden fist of a limb cracking.   Somewhere violence happens: a tree limb in a window.