Ordinary grief, militant heart

heart without a shadow,

not a hand


the green idiom cycling through

its enclosure


Words remembered in isolation

schoolbook words, days


to be beyond all care

sharp burin


if it was a matter of caring


Death, and death again

a startled spring inside you 

flaring out of season


leaves you not alone to wonder

where the good is in that 


held the note as long as it would hold

the strays, run, limp slipshod across the wet grass 

in wingless flight