I hear rustling in a tangle
of mature trees and overgrowth
as I run by. Chipmunk probably.

Oh, no, I play what if
in the extreme: a bear,
a coyote, a bobcat, another

human hiding in the understory
from danger in the open.
I stop, look for a way

in. Oversized dragonflies
helicopter overhead.
I take their iridescence

as a sign to absorb
whatever comes next.
Parting the rushes,

I see it. The bog.

What isn’t visible:
mummified bodies keep
quiet along the false bottom.

This is no secret track
only patience will reward. This is
an entirely new language

I want to float on.
My soggy green limbs
do not resist.

It’s the one who’s always smiling
you fear more than a stone

wall of memories covered in
gregarious graffiti. Trust

twists its way into a frown
with much less effort. The lone turkey

that appears again, poking in the grass
beside the soccer field fence,

gets more of your sympathy
than any gang would.

A peloton of cyclists churns dangerously
close as you fight to keep

your own pace. You beat
the freight train across the tracks.

Wave to the engineer once you’re safely
on the other side. You’re too old

to hop on. Not ready to become
a ghost. Too scared to ghost

an imposter. You are
the imposter. Dust

still on your shoes.
Not ready to be ghosted

just because the song doesn’t live
up to the riff. The bird man’s back.

The geese are gone. More ducks
than you can remember

swim beneath the tree bent
over the lake to protect them.

No one is screaming
in the park at dawn today.

A vessel kills itself
to overcome a fear of heights

a thousand miles away, and back
here nowhere near

a tidal estuary, a building

gets deconstructed accurately
without precision. All concrete

and chrome-tinted windows,
it’s a velcro afternoon

slipping into a crushed
velvet civil twilight. You know

to stay low—an open-top hopper
filled with gravel ahead.

I am very honored and excited to be invited to serve as a poetry teaching assistant (TA) at The Writer’s Hotel Maine MiniMFA Writers Conference next June in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.

You can learn more here.

All these recollections
about the quarries
that have become water parks
and golf courses. Some were brave.

Others not so much. And you know
it’s not true
that no one got hurt.
We were all desperately seeking

to numb ourselves
from the pain
of being so young
and alive. Submerged

survivors. Suicide
divers breaking open
the waters across
Connecticut. The dead

are not waiting
to be forgiven.
Their crimes
were not in the dying.

Not your story
to tell—even underwater
with only mica and brownstone
listening. Never hunted

down, no, we were
the ones closing down
the bars. We were Woolf’s
late-night cave dwellers

watching “from some high place
among rocks.”

Note: Poem references a line from Virginia Woolf’s last novel: Between the Acts.

Skip the golf balls, go straight
to hail

the size of tennis balls.
No bounce. As if some kind

of inferior hawk, a kite
flies on the other side

of the highway overpass
before the storm.

Heavier than air, branches
everywhere, deeper puddles

than I can remember
block access to the trail

I want most.

I hear the hotel hum
a tune I don’t recognize

as I pass behind it
on the Loring Greenway.

Three different tones
(my mother would have identified),

three distinct pronunciations
of niche

confuse the rhythm
of my stride.

The cavity will not hold
the latest gang

of turkeys I see crossing
the street near that other greenway.

Light therapy involves more
than these red bulbs can reveal.

An anniversary of sorts
long forgotten, the other party

dead. I am hermetically sealed

from what ricochets off
this aged bark. My hand doesn’t

even shake or feel cold
to the touch.

to all 500 plus
trees in this park
I love.

From the gnarled
branches of the oldest
bur oaks and fluttering

pinnate leaves
of the ash
to the promise

embodied in that colonnade
of cherry saplings.
I wish I could fly

in the child’s pose—

protect my face
for the birch
in the center

of the garden
of the seasons.
If I were one

of those trees,
I would not feel
this shame or guilt

for loving

too easily. Forgiving
the wrong
ones. Bending across

the pond,
I would give a home
to nesting wood ducks.

I would sway
in the August rain,
blessed, thirst

quenched. I would
not break apart
over this.

It’s too late.
The ink has dried.
The umbrella left irrevocably

mangled. The vines are climbing
higher than anyone would dare
measure. The arbor patinaed.

The outdoor rooms awash in lavender
this time of year. The charcoal
gray crushed stone

paths

that form inner rectangles
give the illusion
of containing everything I fear

losing

in clean compartments.
It’s too late. I cannot hold it
together. Cultivated

plants escape into the wild
overnight. I must learn
to embrace all that whirls

beyond this fisheye view.

None of the heroes hold
up under
the light. They scurry
away, ratty tails exposed.

The dead ones
just lie
there unapologetic
and drained of all

blood. Red

as some overgrown
field of panic
grass, it’s too late
for prairie smoke

blooms. I never

thought I’d be burning
this one too. A photo
I tore up
then restored

with Scotch tape
a month later
when I was 10.
I did sink

in the deep end
of that motel pool
first before being taught
it was better

to float

on the surface. The damage
isn’t so easy to identify
at civil twilight. Deeply
flawed from start

to finish. A beautiful
scar across the cheek
faded too fast.
The heather on the hill

in the distance

is more perfect
if no one disturbs
those underwater logs
in the creek.

None of them.

You know the one—the pond
that reminds me to drink more water.

The pond that silently reflects
our night fears back at us.

The pond that was two ponds once,
stitched together beneath

an old metal rivet-connected footbridge.
The pond that is alive.

The pond that must not die.
The pond that covers our future

in mist. The pond
that has its own rhythm.

The pond that protects turtles
and won’t reveal its secrets.

The pond that is older
than either of us, but not that old.

The pond that is thirsty.
The pond that bleeds

into a wetland hem
surrounding its littoral zone.

The pond that hums
behind the curtain.

The pond that only rarely floats
canoes. The pond that plays

interference. The pond
that will mark your oars.

The pond that cries
no salty tears.

The pond that sleeps. No,
the pond that never sleeps.

The pond that is not
a pond. The pond

that is a lake. The pond
that refuses to be ruined.

The pond that is not too shallow.
The pond that has its limits.

The pond that exhales so soon.
The pond that refuses to be

a punchline. The pond
that is drunk again.

The pond that flies away home.
The pond that was polluted.

The pond that plays possum.
The pond that did not die.

The way ducklings hide
in the wetland prairie grass.
All the avocado trees

I might have grown
if only I saved those

pits.

I call the park my front
yard because I am
unlicensed and landless.

The lake is really
a large pond is a tiny

reservoir

of dreams.
The tarp that hung
from the pedestrian

bridge truss briefly,
then fell sometime

between

my crossings. A
bundle of treated green
canvas could be

an unidentified body
of water. Are you the Jeopardy

answer,

or question? Not
too much
left to drink at all.