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“Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a nervous system disease that
affects the brain and spinal cord. No one knows its cause.
Onset typically begins between the ages of 20 and 40.
Some people lose the ability to write, speak, or walk.”
—U.S. National Library of Medicine

Another blessing. Another gray rain.
All day yesterday it fell and fell.
The sky never changed. It stayed the same.
White grim gray. It was hard to tell
what was cloud and what was light,
what was water, what was sun.
Day slunk slowly into night.

1.

Along the Beaver Creek,
lobelia clings to the soil,
foiling its every effort
to sneak into the stream,
which riffles over rocks below,
aerating the water that fuels
the wetland where a dragonfly
squints its blue, bulbous eyes,
spying mosquitoes mating,
then steers its body
to reach their next move.  
Do you dare, while traipsing
this trail and glancing
milkweed blossoms,
to covet anything
your neighbor may have?

2.

(John 5:1–9)

Saw two eagles swirling and dogging each other
Over the river yesterday—courting or fighting—
And not even the most veteran and experienced
Observer could ever tell which it is they were at.
There’s some deep crucial true thing to say here
About loving and fighting, yes? You feel it too?
But I am not quite sure what it is. All I can do is
Point to the two eagles and say see what I mean?
That’s what a poem is, it seems to me; a poem is
A way to point at something we get but can’t say.
So there are the eagles saying something graceful

When sourgrass bends sweet and heavy
over the path and even the sumac fawns at my feet,
when little streams run large and muddy

under the light of poison oak,
and when tongues of bark hang sodden
from the paling sheen of eucalyptus—

then, then is there moisture enough in my throat
for praise, if only the tiny frogs would return
to bass the bottom of our song.

I’m a wasp. You know, the off-white anglo
quite-saxon kind, who’s protestant too, what’s worse
a male. I talk in rhymes.
Take your darts and throw. I’m
perfect at this target thing,
so large and slow.

Look close. My teeth are false. I drive a Ford.
At church, I sing “Just as I Am” and think
it could be true. Success
for me comes with HD
TV, which I keep tuned to celebrities,

The challenge was easy then:
dive off the boat at high tide,
swim down, down till you touch
the white sand, then translate
the messages signaled from above.

I remember sitting on the bottom,
watching the greenish sun wobble
or trade one shape for another
until the sky became a watercolor map
that only my cousin and I could decipher.