there are times when tender moments shed,
like soft green pine needles in the breeze
and after they’ve turned brown and are laying
in a thick carpet on the ground,
i scoop them up, like treasure–
and tuck them into my heart

those lines running across the country
from town to town and city to city,
from you to him and from him to her,
from north to south and east to west–
tangible, steadied, or invisibly readied,
from there to here and where to when,
from us and back to them again–

still, there’s no real connection

when leaves look like
suspended wings,
tired and brittle–
my thoughts grow melancholy
and i let the wind
chill me to the bone
before turning away

at the very center, there is a hollowness
and it makes the stem brittle
and fragile
and prone to cracking
under pressure

“In my opinion, the most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles . . . and the most marvelous examples.”
—Michel de Montaigne

the day breaks through the cold, dark night
into a morning of fiery skies and floating ice—
this, more than anything else,
breaks my heart into tiny, little pieces
that i collect with my clumsy mittened hands
and shove into deep pockets