Three Poems

WORDWAYS

I

The magnolia still claws
the light, the white
walk still politely lines
the darkness to the door,
over what's left of the swamp
mallards draw homewards
the roofbeams, the flute
sleeps in the reeds,
war, and we sang
black are the mussels our bare
feet will not crush, this blackness
lives on the earth, the leaves
are what we love,

II

wordways, sister, the river
without us has no mouth
to sing even the crow
lines of a tree, the flown
forest of shadow, the world
...