i saw a strawberry in the road

cut in half the white middle

shone like a pie faced moon

reflecting my high beams

against the wet blacktop

did someone stumble while

crossing to picnic

arms laden with bowls and

red checked napkins and salt

rushing to fill the table and mouths of

sweaty headed babies humid

from the swimming hole

i saw the strawberry clearly as i sped

in silence saying nothing

to my sleeping passenger

only venus and mars to witness

as i drove quietly into the night

I tell them it’s kind of like trying to describe what the sky looks like

right now without saying blue, and one of them says,

Why wouldn’t you just say blue? They don’t know yet

about Homer’s wine-dark sea, or how the feathers of a blue jay

are an elaborate set of reflections. We’ve all seen

the new photographs: the Pacific shining bravely into space,

our home shadowed into a crescent. In my mind, the continents

are a cartoon green, the green of a three-sided crayon

clutched in a small hand. How to describe a clear afternoon sky

without the word blue? How to describe our home

seen from that distance? Anyway, I was trying to get them

to describe a rectangle without saying rectangle. Anyway,

maybe I’ve been wasting time, trying to say love

without saying love.

names unexhanged

still, the small sweaty hand

squeezes into mine

does it feel like we’re going down?

she asks again

as if

my answer will change

the window contains

only darkness

as we stare out

we stare back

what if it cracks

and the crack is as long as the memory

from the time you were born?

that crack would extend past the glass

blooming veins in every direction

is that where lighting comes from?

They love my wife.

When they see her enter the grocery store

they rise up, spend their last bit

of Miracle Grow energy

doing a twirl in

direct sunlight

just to catch her eye,

where she sees their discount tag

and past ‘best by date’ smiles

of a lost cause recoverable.

She chooses them almost as much.

Brings them home where they do best,

runway stars in a muted lighting of frosted glass

where they can show off elaborate veined designs

to those who notice most,

those who appreciate

such gardens of

detail and love

as this house does.

Mary Oliver might have said

to shrink the bird, fold each

brown tuft and white-bled

feather, and stuff it in my

pocket for safekeeping. chest

still warm from grey tiles

in the equatorial heat, the

changeable bird seemed

tired of peregrinations,

head ratty above dark

plume. perhaps the house

seemed a safe place to land,

away from the spiking towers

and massive panels of glass,

the creaking of falling forests,

the place for old dogs and

birds to take their long,

conclusive gasps of air.

The water is ice-still; a large green sheet

stretched from the flesh of one shore to another.

A turtle uses its egg-tooth-soft beak

to shatter the serenity of our pool.

And a loon dives, seeking her white whale

in the half-fathom of this algae-green,

bending calamus with fluttering webbed feet.

Surfacing after the storm has arrived.

I see all this through dry skeletons of birch.

A voyeur. Snuff scene enabler. Birdwatcher.

It’s here where you ask if I feel your joy:

sliding the fresh slime of young lily pads

through the lines of my hands. But I didn’t

know how to answer – how it truly feels

to be seeking, something, like that loon.

Some whale, pre-storm, as you take in our view.

is unmappable—Kool-

Aid blue waters slapping shacks

on beaches of white sand

or black sand, three thousand

& some kilometres

off the coast of South America

with an airstrip scarred into a field

or farther north, by the half-

carved icebergs, as though Michelangelo

dropped his tools into the sea.

This place is travel posters

in a dead mega-mall—stacks of

timeshares I sell to myself.