"The Sounds Oblivion Makes" wins Harpur Palate's Milton Kessler Memorial Poetry Prize

We're in the barn, 
my job to pour gasoline
into the carburetor
of the old Toyota wagon,
as he cranks the key repeatedly,
and when the can ignites,
burns my lashes, eyebrows--
I drop it, flaming, onto dry hay
and for a panicked interim
we run back and forth,
moan and yelp like animals,
as we fill buckets from the horse trough,
dump water on flames,
fire lapping the barn walls,
cackling with greedy glee,
and my little sister, on a weekend visit,
caught by another kind of oblivion, 
on the lawn watching us, 
pets the purring cat.

 

Syringa: Title Poem

I thought I would see a flutter of feathers,
a streak of blood,
maybe some bones.
The fox in the night would be satisfied,
or the hawk, or the eagle, and I would lean against a tree,
and I would feel the loss, the empty space.
Instead, she greets me from a spot far off on the lake.
She stretches out her broken wing
as if to question my intention,
my coming, my watching.
Her body shines in the copper light.

It is difficult for both of us,
the endless floating in dark water,
the waiting eyes,
the pale, cold sky
and ice.
Every day the clutching branches of ice.

And I have come to love her. It is difficult,
the ice like lace, the glow of her neck
as she arches back upon herself,
the desolation of the sky, and joy,
the wild joy that blossoms toward us in the dark.

The Quiet Listeners

Go into the woods
and tell your story
to the trees.
They are wise
standing in their folds of silence
among white crystals of rock
and dying limbs.
And they have time.
Time for the swaying of leaves,
the floating down,
the dust.
They have time for gathering
and holding the earth about their feet.
Do this.
It is something I have learned.
How they will bend down to you
so softly.
They will bend down to you
and listen.