Three Poems

As I emerge clean
from confession I hear the crowd
shouting: We refuse to stink
with the flesh of twice-dead
Lazarus sticking to our bones
unable to resurrect.

My retreat is sleep.
When I arouse, mother and father
have long been dead,
and all I have is this
garment without seam
wadded into my fist.

Gardening Through The Ages

    I.
A sudden whiff of the spoiled fish
which you forgot to bury
in your garden warns you of
the body you are or own.

Yesterday when sickling
last year's weeds around
...