Twelve Sparrows
My worries are cracker crumbs
beneath my table on a darkened porch.
Twelve sparrows alight on a branch
shuttering among the yellow leaves
but are too frightened to come near.
Quietly, so as not to startle them,
though one frantically leaps onto another limb,
while another arcs off into the dusk,
I walk down the steps into the grass,
and just for a moment, over my shoulder,
having removed watch, jacket, name,
I glance back at the furious feeding.
An Ex-Lover's Landscape
A swirl of blackbirds
above shallow hills.
Shorn fields
the color of sawdust.
An abandoned farmhouse
white with blue trim.
A fallen maple
in the eroded riverbank.
And where I now stand,
in glaring sunlight
scanning rocks,
no one.
