Two Poems

 

Father Act

They go to flashing
waters of blue leaf:
holiday fishermen,
each man casting
his line into memory,
his innocence caught
with a simple flick
of the wrist.

 

Making Angels

Time huddles in the dust
of summer, leaving no imprint;
cotton dresses stick and thoughts
clog like wool in this heat.
Lemonade is cool salve
for an old heart ripped
with remembering cold branches
etched against the sky when snow
held the earth near my father's house
and angels moved across the fields.
Gone now, all of them.

I've stood beside their images
quickening under pale sheets
and prayed for snow, imagining
the surface of heaven all white,
stretching for miles and through
the flood of light, my friends lain
down, flailing their arms into wings.