--CAN WE COUNT ON YOU?

The Birthday Album

 The days are pages looking back at you on a table,

loose and uncollected like leaves

or your windblown hair.

See how you smile in this one?

And here’s your boy, swaddled like baby Jesus in your arms.

Pick up the picture in the right hand corner

and you’ll find yourself a little girl again,

glitter in your hair, face-painted cheeks and

bubble gum smile.

Once

you lifted your face to the sun and said you’d own it,

and now, on this, the brightest of all days,

your claim has

rightfully come true.

Storm Lake

The waves remind me

of days when we would skim stones

across the flat face of Storm Lake

row boats on the far side

sun eavesdropping like a bored blister.

You said we’d always be together

and though this very water took you years ago

I am here to celebrate you,

to help you keep your solemn promise.

Presents

Slithering inside a Folgers coffee can with

slits cut into the Saran Wrap cover,

a copper-tailed snake was the gift you gave.

In later years there were others—

driftwood embossed with a baby Jesus shape,

pints of just-picked blackberries,

a bouquet of daises you’d found in the slumped hills

behind our mobile home.

It was me who dreamed of riches

and you who never cared.

Today I kneel by your headstone

missing the magic of your simple kindness,

missing them but you

most of all.

Blue

Blue noses my palm for petting,

his eyes probably no different than mine—

tar pits, rheumy glue.

I pat the cushion

and he lopes up on the sofa smelling of soap

suds from the bath I gave him

this morning.

He rests his canine head in my lap,

tongue bologna-colored and dry as toast.

I scratch the crease behind his ear.

I hold out the any new air,

staring at fireplace flames,

seeing the ghost of you

in the rage of red and rising smoke.

When our dog cocks his head,

I tell him,

“She’ll be back. 

She will.”