Hope
(after Ted Kooser)
is the bottomless
velvet shopping bag
borne by a penguin-gaited
Grandmother, ample as
an autumn snow owl,
eyes jay-shadowed,
cheeks cardinal flame,
fragrant with Lily of the Valley –
talced white as its bells –
where plummeting
worst and unbearable
meet whispering feathers
By 4:00 that glorious summer
we’d meet on the porch
on top of the freezer
up from hot dog breath
and drool, toasting each other
with first swallows
of Miller Draft, the icy bits
sticking briefly to the polyps
on our tongues,
thinning our front teeth,
chasing Taos Fire on slivers
of salt ham, laughing
and grieving our stories
of fathers, brothers, lovers:
gone, dying, dead,
trying not to scratch
the sweat bee welts,
chests heavy
with the perfume
of wisteria
and wild onions.
Phoenix
After their last cross-country meet
she rubbed him down
and let him out
at the shabby end of the barn
with the other school horses,
unaware
he would want her,
pine for the pressure of her thighs
at the turns,
her urging before the jumps,
desire her with each new crop
of girls and bruised apples,
while she, for twenty years would seek
his slow steadiness and their surging
the obstacles together.