"Surreality" and "in the midst of winter rains"

Surreality

Under the house, dead rats in traps
float in waters sluicing through
 
from broken pipe to gutter.
Can you believe it? Stars
 
drop pearls of light into
the sheen on the roof. The veins
 
in my hands stand out. This
was only one thing my father
 
gave me. Don’t speak of that past
without explaining. But really
 
do I care any more whether there was
buckshot in the pheasants we ate
 
back then? Now I care whether
we all fall off the crumble of this
 
cliff. For the eyes of my grand-
children watching what will come. . .
 
do not say we did nothing. We
did it all. Tree, stone, sky
 
float in the afterlife of history’s
many fingers holding
 
the crows too who told us,
didn’t they, and under the house
 
the way you can see is only
with that stink of imagination.
 
Wandering I used to say is all,
and I was right, for once—
 
wandering is the way it moves.
We are a far land on the cusp of exit.
 
It’s my birthday but there’s
no hour to hold. Dusk
 
tells you its warning or
its hymn, every day. Birds
 
have always tried to tell us.

in the midst of winter rains

bright
           as in volcano’s hibiscus flow
 
 
bright
                as fang of sorrow
                       or lightning chord of joy
 
 
in the midst of winter rains
 
 
we think of fire, minds fill
with smoke and ash of what is not now
but hold
            still bloodbright as in fire’s hibiscus glow
 
mountains blaze, trees candled into brief avatar explode
       as we breathe an invisible future’s scent yet
                                 watch hope’s green grass
grown thick as morning once again
 
 
in the midst of winter rains
 
bright
            as in new leaf’s green unfurl
 
bright
             as fang of sorrow
                        or lightning chord of joy