The U.S. vs. Foster

It is
A testament
To the weakness
Of language

That words
Can be usurped
For politics

And used against you
To define you
Into illegality

Excommunicating
Intact
Entire philosophies

Dispossessing you
Of the expression
For your meanings

Leaving you
Deprived
Of a tongue


--Aura, 2001

Birch

Walking
In the woods
I find
Your thin skin
Rent
And peeling
In sheets

Seeing
Into the layers
Opening
Between limbs
Your pale
Clean
Coral

Tearing
Away the paper
To uncover you

I take a shred
Dusty with neglect

And look
At your lenticular script
The brown freckles
In their field of flesh
Benign
And unaffected

I walk
Around you
Staring


--Flint Hills Review, 2006

Damp Wings

While watering
Red salvia
Petunias
By accident
I wet a moth

A pattern
Of tan
On its outer wings
Sliding out
Showing intimate
Inner rose

It turned its wings
To the wind
And the sun
And began to flutter

Not the flapping
Of flight
But a drying
Tremble

For minutes
As I watched—
The droplets
On its body
Shrank

The dampness
Of its wings
Invisible


--Avocet, 2000

Monument

Out in the canyon lands
of Arizona
rain falls

like tines of a garden rake
around Egairia who is

the standing rocks

Looking in her direction
a shower of small words falls
like drops
from a water wand
in circles
around her

Then the larger words
come from the clouds behind him
splattering
on the dry soil
and soaking in


--Avocet, 1999
--Residual Fragments