Discovery Drafts

Dinosaurs sing, Calling forth the new light. Dinosaurs sing, And scatter forth mammals Fourteen times their size From the feeders. Dinosaurs sing, And my dogs stir in their bed, Which is my bed, And I listen As music drifts up from the void And I make meaning From sound and movement As I resolve to get up And to have my dogs do the same.

My grandmother Repaired the fracture In this Japanese rice bowl With brown glue And no apologies Years upon years ago And set it on her desk With the repair to the back And out of her view. Chrysanthemums enwreath the bowl In oranges, reds, and golds And the rust of that glue Adrift in a porcelain sea. If she were alive, My grandmother would be One-hundred, five years old. She would find the glue Down cellar and Fix any fracture That came between her And the bouquet She made of life.

Every morning, A new fragment Lay on the sand As a new offering of the sea. I would claim the pieces Thinking one day I might assemble a whole Sand dollar. I would build with the disparate bits, Beginning from the center Of a universe The heart of which I only hoped find In the spaces Between the fragments That did not quite fit together.

Stop sign At the end of a long road: “Sold.” My home, gone: Your neighbor told me so.

Falling--how far? The clay vessel releasing How many stars Into what fathomless night? Who was there? Whose hand, What sound, And who would have wanted to know? The clay vessel: A shattering or a release? Sharp edges adrift in the universe, or no? Once, I would have wanted answers, To know what had happened And when. To know Who reached into the universe, Turning and turning the stars Into constellations, And perhaps why. Now, though, I don’t care. For me, it is enough to look and wonder What it would be like To feel the hands that made this happen.

When I close my eyes, I stand again before that window As the sun slips Into the shallow water Of early evening. Cars cross, trucks cross, Someone on a bicycle crosses The high-rise bridge Linking distinct worlds. In the silence, I weigh the value of this one, How it responds to the voice of the sea. Watching, I feel the fading warmth of daylight Through the pane As blue drifts into purple. The white heron and the blue, The osprey and the stork Are out of my range As they perch on the salt-dried trees Along the Intracoastal, Silent and waiting. The sun slips away, And so does the heat. I feel it At this window As I think of those birds And what it means To return.

There were geese. They responded to my heavy foot. They moved into the water. I watched. A blue heron gackled and glided Across still water, Casting a shadow over the bestirred water. I was an intruder, and this was the drama And no surrender. I counted the babies: seven, like yesterday. Glide along, geese . Tell this story.

Said the email to staff: “Kayla and Mike's Father died suddenly Saturday. Their mother wanted you to know.” Their father, A veteran and a history teacher At the school down the road, Shot himself in the head.   Nobody saw it coming. Not even Mary. They’re saying PTSD. Kayla and Mike are here today Expecting to be taught. Really.

Asleep, I missed the ending of the movie, So you told me what happened, Saying Google would charge you To watch it again. I listened. I wanted to kill myself. We’re talking $4.99. And I’m not worth it.