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The garden flowering behind us, we fussed about
The reasons why, and how we were deceived:
How gullible I was, his gallantries,
The way the serpent tempted me to doubt,
The hard scrabble of work. My daily bouts
With tears watering the fragrant leaves
Left me garnering up the yellow sheaves,
Working the human consequences out.
Remembering Eden in each other’s arms
We struggled for the paradise we lost.
Too soon the lure of knowledge lost its charm.
Driven together we joined our dust to dust,

The precise round hole
in the headlight:

a moment’s work
of the small, sharp hoof,

as though an artist
had carved it out,

dropping a moon of glass
to the pavement.

The deer lost in the grass,
my father shatters:

a man wearied
by man’s violence,

the cruelty of fathers,
an animal helplessness.

Unfathered, undaughtered,
my shoulder bone

of his bones becomes
a nest for his weeping.

This time it comes upon you
in the shower, your hair thick with lather
and the hot water running low,
today, after waking late again
in an empty bed, after too many hours

of sleep, yes, this is when it arrives,
at the end of a sigh, as you bend
and angle for the soap beside the drain,
as a slow melody lifts from the stereo,
filtering through the curtain in just

Oh the load we carried
home from ’Nam.
The general ordered
“kill the damn enemy,
every one of them.”

But the woman,
scarf wrapped around her head,
waist deep in a swamp,
young son wearing a bamboo hat
nestled in her arms.

Now I hear the chopper,
taste sweat on my lips,
smell blood in the dirt,
see bone on the road
as I walk my children to school.

earth will have her own way with hunger
green springing up devouring light
roots singing down into darkness
seeking water
rivers hurling themselves to the sea
that, too, is hunger
tides eating up shores
falling and rising
teased by the moon
and the mountains mute in their mystery
repaying the eagle and the forest
everything hungers here
even the sand mingling with wind
scours then savors all into nothingness
remember
it is not their plenty or scarcity that we honor
but desire