"Flattened," "December," and "February, 2017"

Flattened

He’s come to hate the academy, its sterile rigors.

Steel rails, parallel; long ribbon of wooden ties:

all night, all day, trains rattle that whole apparatus.

He lays his poem anthology on the track.

December

Holly bushes buried by two feet of snow.

On the sidewalk, shoveling, he uncovers a child’s

mitten.  In half-light, he holds it up—red, green, tiny.

He pockets it, shovels and thinks.  Maybe the lost one

is safe, at home.  Or the child is one-armed, maimed.

Or, under all this whiteness, is lying cold, alone.

February, 2017

Always she goes, carrying her album:  Photos

of the Future.

                        But back at home, uneasy,

he wanders room to room.

                                          She tells him, “Stop

looking, but not searching.  Wait for Time to

return, and for the wave to break at our door.”