To you who collect awards and fellowships;
to you who receive grants because you
            drink deeply of the Dakotas,
            probe Pennsylvania’s coals and keystones,
            and weather the wilds of Wyoming;

to you whose ancestors were anchored in the Ozarks
            of Arkansas and harangued hunger in Georgia,
            to you heirs of the lyric disintegration of Lousiana
            and the ever glad expanses of Florida,
            to you who narrate Norwegian silence in St. Paul
            and Polish pride in Peoria;

to you who vocalize vocatives to pioneers in Nebraska
            and brandish bowls of dust in Oklahoma,
            to you lamenters of Los Angeles
            mourning manzanilla buried beneath boulevards…

On the upper floor there live two women,
Sisters, never married, now grown old.
Late in autumn they string ripe persimmon
Out to dry in winter’s bright blue cold…

There was this time
when I was a kid
I ate way more ’n
I wish that I did
I saw & I craved
& I gave it a try
Six huge helpings
of too sweet pie
I musta been thinking
I don’t know what
It started to roil
& boil in my gut…

This poem is dedicated to the woman
who admired my
mustard yellow ballet flats
that were not pink
and not even red.
With regard to these
mustard yellow ballet flats
she said
I love your shoes…

I walked past us
on Grand Avenue last night.
We were seven years ago
            sometimes bragging,
            sometimes begging,
and we didn’t see me at all…

All praise to thee,
My Lord, for scree,
For deep crevasse
And alpine moss,
For glacial till
And ice-blue rill,
For snowy branch
And avalanche…

Who’d have thought there could be winter flowers?
Northerners like me would count it folly,
Wanting more than evergreen and holly.
Peonies and red agave towers…