One mango bent its branch
over the backyard pond.

     A water boatman sculled
          over a surface that held

          goldfish and our faces,
          blue sky and the fruit,

and all I wanted was to touch it
     there on the side

     where the green skin
     had reddened in the sun.

In the beginning, it seemed
that simple.

 

Evening Song: St. Mark's Trail    

The fuzzy hum of bike tires
     on coarse-grained asphalt strewn
with pine straw, the warm hum

     of muscle on shinbone,
a distant burning, like the sun
     that dies behind the pinewoods,

thickening the cool shadows
     as the emptied sky hums
with the last light, the wind

     with woodsmoke, as crickets hum
the dark understory, where nothing
     knows or needs the words.