Riddle, Dollar, String
Living between, she pretends the comfort of walls
within walls, the unseen’s dispensation.
A slow dragging. The raked leaves.
And all the naked oaks bowing to the wind,
feeling the scratch of impending growth,
the twig’s pearl poised to push through
this mask, stolen sounds dotting the morning.
Later, watching lizards on the wall
or the haze of bees surrounding the agave.
No one pays. Limestone. Mulch. Light.
Unformed thoughts snaking through.
Like that line wrapped around her waist,
another purpose only she could explain.
“Riddle, Dollar, String” first appeared in The New Reader Magazine, in March 2018.
O at the Edges 
Most mysterious – I’m thinking of the live-oaks shedding old leaves as the new ones push through – thinking of the hours I’ve raked those leaves in my 35 years at this address – how this past Spring there were far fewer due to tree disease, this coming Spring there’ll be considerably fewer to rake – the tree now merely stump. But I’m stumped by “no one pays” – and curious about the woman with line around her waist and an apparent vivid imagination.
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I do miss the live oak that stood outside my shack. We both grew a lot in our more than three decades together!
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