Wood sways and mutters; palsied shutters bang.The call has come. Stripped of starlight, nightdwindles to gritty lavender and gray;mad jags of wind keep drowning out the surf.We dress, then slog through beach plums to the bay. Three days before, we calmed ten bottlenoses,then led an exodus into

Autumn is the time of yearwhen God’s invisible handpaints the leavesin broad strokesof color,then plucks them offone by one.

and all floating implementsstar studded saintsand gemstone dreamsmoon smoke      incensesquandered speechhearts that have wanderedstrangers squinting at the skythe cello notes risinglight escaping through a crack in the walldandelion fluff on a newborn’s headowl windthe old woma

You fold this sweater the way a mothbuilds halls from the darkness it needsto go on living—safe inside this closet a family is gathering for dinner, cashmerewith oil, some garlic, a little salt, litand wings warmed by mealtime stories about flying at night into small firesgrazing on

I speak bones to you in the morning—hollow, fragile, ordained frameworks,their marrow winnowed by earth time. I hear emptiness in my pleas for health,forgiveness, prosperity. Echoes ossifywhere blood once pulsed and built. Like the half-attentive spouse who’s learnedto monotone

One February morning, pausebetween kitchen and dining roomto weep at Belle and Sebastiansinging about God. The cold is goodfor maple syrup, makes sap run,you aren’t sure how, or why this pretty popsong makes you snivel and drip like a cuttwig. You’ve seen God on Bisson street,God in a bi