splintered moon
the single voice
of many frogs

the ambulance
pulls away . . .
their immaculate lawn

Psithurism

Once, when I was four, my brother snoring in the bunk above, I crept out of bed and padded past my parents’ room, down the basement stairs — both hands on the rail, and stepped out the back door, snow crunching under my footy pajamas, and except for wind in the trees: silence — no one to call me stupid or yell at me for not eating lima beans, and there, in the backyard, I looked up at the moon, and no one, not my parents, my brother, not a lover confided in years later, knew I walked away that night and never returned.

december rain
a blue jay blooms
in tree after tree