waiting

drought year-
only the shape of water
on the stones

The Sound

Marc says the suffering that we don’t see

still makes a sort of sound—a subtle, soft

noise, nothing like the cries of screams that we

might think of--more the slight scrape of a hat doffed

by a quiet man, ignored as he stands back

to let a lovely woman pass, her dress

just brushing his coat. Or else it’s like a crack

in an old foundation, slowly widening, the stress

and slippage going on unnoticed by

the family upstairs, the daughter leaving

for a date, her mother’s resigned sigh

when she sees her. It’s like the heaving

of a stone into a lake, before it drops.

It’s shy, it’s barely there. It never stops.

For Lew Welch In A Snowfall

Snowfall in March:

I sit in the white glow reading a thesis

About you. Your poems, your life.

The author's my student,

He even quotes me.

Forty years since we joked in a kitchen in Portland

Twenty since you disappeared.

All those years and their moments—

Crackling bacon, slamming car doors,

Poems tried out on friends,

Will be one more archive,

One more shaky text.

But life continues in the kitchen

Where we still laugh and cook,

Watching snow.