DiaBLOGue

We slow.
      What is this? Why?
            We ride along, our eyes,

No words make a difference
against the child’s cries and damp heat—
only the rocking, rocking,

It was the high Uintas,
evening of our first day-hike
with grandchildren . . . their lives until then
seeming distant, clustered and glowing
as the far Pleiades to our gazing.

On Mother’s Day it snows
in our backyard, the kind that grows
on cottonwoods and makes my nose
itch inside the nostrils, pinch half-closed

Confirmed in the slim night shadows,
a four-toed blue and gold dragon ridges

the tiles of the moss-glazed roof, ascends
to the slivering waxed Têt moon, an off-center

While you sleep with abandon, I quiverbeside you, what ifs crawling my skin.You, warm beside me: liquidstillness. You toil not, neither do you spin. I wishI could ladle you over me, rub youinto the creases…