Raking Hay

My hands are calloused from the pull of the pole.
Downward, bails of cut grass twisting and turning,
like kneading bread into straight line knots for the street.
The grass turns to hay in the sun or shade.
It moves with the pull of the teeth in my hand.
Grating sounds of plastic on dirt,
scavenging the soil for more to turn. 
Arms aching with a tug of earth war.

Legs stumbling downhill,
raking grass for the pile.
The stalks rose to my waist in the moonlight yesterday.
They slept with the weeds in the dark of my dreams.
Lit grass, endlessly growing for the lawnmower man.
Scattered in my field now after his mechanical cut, scattered like seeds for the push and pull.
My grass is twisting, turning and wet. The blue tarp collects it for spinning compost.
We pull it across gravel to a place in the shade.
Somewhere by the street blades turn with the wind.
The leaves go with the cars where they may, where they float.
I do not wish to see where they fly away. 
The green concrete resist the collect in my yard.
They go with the wind, as the wheels speed down the track.
My tufts in formed bails are dragged to the ravine.
Amid the dark shade by a calm pond,
hay starts to take form.  

Earthworm in Soil

Charlie Darwin said as much. So much from such a lowly thing.
Under a blue tarp, you hid under the covers of two inch mud, eating shit.
Remove the plastic blanket and you pretended you were dead.
In the sunlight, in the glove of a handler, you wriggled, writhed and split
in two, across circle cut segmentations.
Your body flowed like waves upon a foreign shore.
Regeneration only happens in shady soil.
Back in dirt, you dug tunnels into darkness.
Every inch opening pathways for air and light.
The leaves and dust and matter you digest,
open new roads for other worms to wiggle into.
You mine into a potted plot of backyard,
Inching deeper into cold, wet earth,
Waiting for another you to be born.
Elsewhere.

Mannequin in a Parked Car

The form is anatomically correct.
Legs draped over the front seat, limp and loose.
Pants and underwear in a ball in the backseat.
There is an empty glass jug on the driver's seat.
A plastic pill bottle with a printed name next to it. 
You do not have the look of a mannequin
lying in a backseat of a parked car,
awaiting the storefront window.

Two Black Seabirds

The large black bird dips its wings
and plunges down to still water.
Under the surface, it is a kingfisher.
Below sun soaked inlet waters, it disappears,
for a moment, into the world of the sea.
The ripple moves in strange circles to the shore.
The swans drift gracefully upstream.
The ducks paddle away in quacking circles.
The seagulls circle overhead for shells.
The gregarious geese gather for arched flight paths away.
The solitary great white heron watches from the reeds.
The cormorant has his way.
He feeds from underneath the surface of things.
On the pylon of the old mill, he shakes marsh water
from his saturated black wings.
Another blackbird like him eyes him there.
He keeps watch of him, his wet companion.
He is sentinel, dry, and still.
The wet bird wiggles and drips and flaps.
He is happy with the fish swimming down his throat.
The sun warms the feathers from the plunge and dive.
Two black seabirds perch on pylons in the salt marsh.
One wet, one dry.
One a statue, one a scavenger.
Eyes of the birds forward, upward or downward,
searching high blue sky above or dead set on dark water moving below. 

Beads of water dripping down old wooden mill logs
and back into the tidal waters surging past them forever.
Two birds, preparing for the next dive
underneath the surface of things.

Red Crane Like a Heart Across the Sky

The red crane twists and torques from earth to sky.
It rises and falls like the letter M.
Machine operating, air to  land, and up again,
like a rollercoaster tipping and tilting its rider to its earthy end.
Hand at the end of arm, cupped in hard dirt, digging through rock and sediment and old cement foundations, long carted away by dusty, fuming dumpster trucks, revving engines down crowded streets to waiting debris barges in the harbor. The rubbish, after the rummage, floats away on water.
The blue fence with posted signs sanctions off space for excavation.
It is a spot, no more than a plot or two.
It is enough room to lay foundations for building.
The red crane looks like a heart across a cloudy blue sky.
The round edges gone.
The lines pointed and peaked, toward substrata and stars,
heavens and hells, brown and blue.
It once was metal utility lines, up and down, air descending into dirt.
The red crane keeps moving and sifting, its silver skeleton keeps twisting.
The hole gets deeper and deeper with every dig.
Inside the blue fence, the red crane prepares the dug brown ground
for the right depth to build.
It remains a red crane like a heart across the blue cloudy sky.

Cat with a Broken Jaw

The cat with the broken jaw slinks forward on its belly,
across the infield grass in blazing hot sun, a body of jelly.

It is far away from home, no hole to crawl in ahead.
The trees circle the moving scene. This body is lead.


Blood drips and cakes on white, clawless stretched paws.
A metal frame and rubber wheel is the hit and run cause. 

The jaw hangs on a hinge, wire needed for repair.
Tabby fur frayed, dirty, and dingy, a sight for despair.

Cat missing signs tacked to trees and taped to signposts streets away.
 A passerby watches in horror, eyes anguished, pure dismay

Here, on the grass, of a park, in the spring,
A poor helpless blue-eyed kitten of a thing.

There is no moan, no cry, as we lift it from the ground.
Silence is agony, we wait to hear a peep or a sound. 

The body grows heavy. The cat accepts a ride.
We move in a hurry, feet faster each stride.


The wheels never stopped to see or help the hurt cat.
The time-clocking cyclist never once thought of that.

The cat with the broken jaw is carried away, by my hands.
It purrs in my lap, now, in a waiting room for other lands.