(one)
if welcome is bitter, so is trust
like something left behind
as if one got lost
everyone is lost
there are broken things
a broken leg, collar bone
a broken song
some spoken war of interiors
and outer cloak --
my anger could fly to the heavens
who chooses to veil the truth
like a stone held inside the left cheek
on certain roads, at careful spaces
it is possible --
i told my husband my grave is with his,
and it is, still

(two)

the lake swallowed our faces in the waves
the rain swallowed the waves
and the clouds trailed after
the mouse builds its nest by the stone ledge
how else can a tiny thief build
except in unconscious silence
who in this world has not been a thief
if shelter is forged
in a field of vanishing things
does theft remain some kind of lie?
or does it become the monument the single
dead grass became?


(three)

we who must weave this planet in order to keep
it are standing at the wire fence
namaste
the loved fence may it become a living thing
from life
to life



(four)

absent lines from stolen notebooks
pages like souls have received the wind
the same wind falls inside my thin chest
and the pages live there like friends, who
shuttered their doors when they moved
the desert wind hungers like a knife
and so would the absent ones --
i live with quiet like birds who fly silently
you cannot tell them except by the traceless wind

if my life is a ruin it is because i
tried to swallow the war
and keep it in small baskets
where the fighting could be opened
then closed
like a picnic when there was no food

i cannot forget the forgotten things


(five)

then
and we say goodbye
one less dream slain
i hope
and in the end
i realize we never met
in the way ghosts have met
and never met the folks in charge
--- you were in charge of this poem?
i remember that
.........................................................
A peace activist, Heidi writes: There is so much pain in this world, I hope the poets among us are building kinds of forest canopy where the world may heal.