he will know when
she finds relief
stops blaming
the sky
stands beneath
his favorite ash
and laughs
at the sight
of all
those carvings
exposing them
she knows now
trees prefer
a gentle touch
without risk
of tattoo

Illegible scrawl creates a collision
on a freakishly cold, rainy morning
in mid-May.

She wears a knit cap. Tree pollen
ruins her for anyone
who crosses this crooked line.

Nothing against those blooming
northern pin oaks. Misery clears
an unwanted swath

through an urban forest
of steet signs and boulevard droops.
How did she get from tree

lawn to boulevard? By way of berm
to hellstrip to swale to snow shelf
on the verge of bursting forth

along a line of maidenhair trees,
dewy green blades might reply.

Extreme weather cleaves another
station where she might have met you
during a calmer time.

A crawler reaches for the sky
so that vegetables with dirt on them
might take us the rest of the way.

In this version, she retreats
from guitar strums,
the plaintive crack
of a worn voice,
to write a letter
to her 27-year-old self:

How many babies won’t you have?
How long will you stay
in one place?

A voice in some messier version
gives her permission
to let the questions dangle
precariously from her lower lip.
Whispers from another river
elevate her view

of all that high water danger.
She wants to release it
to a more natural shape and flow.

Another version
will emerge truer
with more nuanced
section cuts
in an even darker ink,
if she can wait
just a little longer.

she keeps coming to you
in a dream fog
to show you where

the streetcars used to run
around a sharp bend
the hill so much steeper

in the slumbering mind
you know she’s wrong
you remember those tracks

mapping a different route
on another street / neither of you
alive when buses replaced trams

in another city
in another state
in another dream

you ride the Rapid
downtown / it will remain
the Terminal Tower

in your mind / dare you say heart / she nods when you laugh at yourself
all the protesting

may have been valid
but the crooked river
is slowly being set free

first it’s snow
in the forecast
to terrorize the brand new buds

that arrived
on tree branches overnight

then it’s a thunderstorm
then occasional rain
then this cloudy and cool

the last Saturday in April
not so cruel

the cyclist run over
by a produce truck
will survive

a luthier picks through
the city’s old bones

to make his next move
May will come to
in tune

margin

I don’t know if
the bees will
rise again.

What if
I give up
the pen—

dump all
I’ve captured
into a two-minute iMovie.

Photographers are thieves
like us. We steal
bodies to reframe

and remind us
of all we cannot know
like those bees

that can shake
pollen off
a flower’s anthers.

As a high rising terminal
climbs up the left margin,
a vocal fry slides down the right.

This is a monotone—
my mantra to the edge
where I wait

for the city and the sea
to bleed

into each other. My wings
beat so much faster
than either of us predicted.

This poem is a train,
this stanza
a station.

Express through
the next

into another
Good Friday
waiting for the bees.

This one’s not going to Rome.
We can open the window
against the night.

into the thinnest ether
what is this ether
will it help me sleep

all those night singers
swinging their tippers
pound their bodhráns

strange ones
made of dragon skin
let the goats roam free

leave the misplaced Ferris wheel
on the mall behind
at least I still have a stoop

even if the vestibule window
gets smashed in the middle
of the night the way I no longer can

there are always strangers on a train
that’s just how it is
in this stanza

a future one
will house Uncatena
the ferry and the island

here on a plane about to take off
for Ireland / some turbulence
some troubles ahead / please not again

delicious thoughts of death
she sleeps with one eye open
I see it with my own left / over eye

it’s an affliction
not addiction
this arriving everywhere early

listening to the National’s “Sorrow”
I don’t wanna get over you
I am doomed

to this single story
looking for the overstory
in an understory realm

I bought no wool
I drank no Guinness
attended no mass

I ate no lamb / gave no blood
the way this island
has given me mine

don’t leave Eavan on the plane
like some perfumed magazine
flipped through / barely read

yes / the swan-necked streetlamps
were on / Eavan / and I could have strolled
through St. Stephen’s Green

100 more times
as 100 shades of green
course through my veins

before New England
there was this Ireland

allergic to wool
just like my dad / his dad
worked in the mill

and it was that disturbed English poet
Charlotte Mew who said something about
the little damp room with the seaweed smell

from the grave pages
and pages will spew forth
and spill all over
the aching hill / constrained
compressed / blessed lines
that murmur all risks to come

start dancing
with all darting flames
stop fearing the afterburn
of desire to touch his face in darkness
continue seeing the color red
before it swings too far into orange

beyond the street
and window sill
and peaceful ceiling
there’s water
I want to say
there’s always water

not always the right kind
right amount / in the right places
I want to say
fold up all the floods
stack them in flat file drawers
forever vaulted away

where’s the fun in that / stealing
from the best
when the thief just wants

to nap
on a soggy bank
under a bare oak
and dream about another thousand
as if my life
and death depend on it