g tale slowly much as
thick yarn with a kitten
batting it, one event at a time
in sepulchre movement down a
linoleum floor. Two twins burning,
fever scalded in frigid water only
shock setting in, dying to join
the black creek water from which
her unwilling buckets borrowed
this liquid crucifixion and bitter vinegar.

4
Or the drive-house door, silent in precision,
unseen hands before marauding
hoofs in unison dark from windows' edge
to better hear little poke of
sleigh bells or harness rattling grim
with a sick man's cough.

5
This admission of spectral animals
somehow more unsettling than
the young woman next combing her
hair at the foot of the bed scaring
the daylights out of me picturing
the whereabouts of stockinged feet,
these tricksters from another world;
drum and kettle corps gypsy fife
with harbinger doom to rasp of
falling broom--
old and yellow silky straw witch's hair--
and a cat dark
as the Devil's very bread.

WHITE CHINA PLATES II

You could have driven
a pick-up truck
thru spokes of that moon, so big and radiant
this upended water chestnut--
ground mist weeping
in the shadows
flutter of an old woman's shawl,
the clammy smell like
a child's fingers to the face,
a little unsettling
crickets and dew in brigades
running tears on the old
shoe leather.

MAIL DROP

A boat sits on the very shallows
of a lake
in egg-cup fashion,
a tea-cosy covering waves,
orchestrating the bob of colours
in white enamel blue
inverted water.

Afar, the boat is a rasher of bacon
a strip, stripling, stipend
slicing the lake,
distancing.

The boat is an envelope
at the end of the world,
planet-sized, pea-green
about to spin crazily
into the sun at the
end of a rifle-sized
mail drop.

The boat rides amid the
between places of things,
furtive longings
where crones sit within
waiting bushes &
lizards visit skin,
dirge of teeth gnashing
the fringe canopy of
flowing leaves.

HEADDRESS

Stravinsky's Firebird,
Debussy's La Mer
lilting arrangement like a windmill
with a little Hottentot of a bird
scurrying over leaves
like hot coals,
nest a pudding arrangement,
oven-shaped,
dappled with a string.

She is alternatively
lady of the green shoots,
Empress of an Andes of twigs
for this cow-pie upended
b