charity begins

and at home, ends
like the soggy plastic bag
blown winter-hard
across open yards
from the neighbor’s
recycling bin

mostly cloudy

when will I be    available to this sun
wanting to warm    cloth skin sense
that kernel    last lick of faith
in ground that must prove
again and again    its fertility
to leaf stem root    worm

cause nor remedy

the fine line between rain and snow
as the yoga station plays
between soothing and sentimental
to drown out house-noise, aggravation something
like the electrician’s spray-paint
between two newly planted grasses
over the struggling Joe-Pye, right up the birch
straight steady blood-pressure rise, fluorescent

(found) better

ideas that began
as unexpected fragments
scented with harbor light
have blue promise
better than medication

Prairie Burn, iii.

you say burned out and it means loss
unbelonging here or there, certain
withdrawal root by root, shriveled

another fire set to renew
ensure survival, this smoke
sinks low on black field

gutted clean to bare soil—
when comes the flush of green
growth? will it

Prairie Burn, ii.

your heart, you think, must
by now be something
like that Hill Country scrub—

even your outside prickly
inside hard and harder
dry white

when? there were years
of next-to-no rain
and still the flowers bloomed

Prairie Burn, i.

driving south, pear trees
like white flame, sparked wild
and a-flourish

this in-between, on-road:
bare winter prairie behind
ahead nothing but duty

wrung of its last ounce of love
a clutter of rocks
glossed with bluebonnets