Glioma
It manifests in x-ray
winged across the corpus callosum
into both hemispheres
of the brain.

But when she told me
its common name
I imagined the butterfly-
shaped tumor wrapped

across her forehead’s
inside clinging for dear
life. What ugly beauty
where papery flutter

should articulate far more
fluidly than the joints
of an action figure.
So many life doings

collapse so unmercifully
into the pinhead of a diagnosis.
They provoke a kind
of jealousy.

She speaks the wrong word.
The crisp edges of sheets
pulled tight into order
no longer matter.

Carson Culver
His words I
laughed, or just smiled

at, but also left me
wondering, unsure

if they meant something
eternal when he was

breathing,

now seem true as
tractor ballast

weight or a haggard’s
late-learned ambition

where the sky
has grown

uncrowded.

September 4 In Any Year
That change,
deep-stirred leaf
molecules, the
new awareness
that must learn
to believe.

The way automobile
paint skews
its age, dialoguing
with minute
shadings,
expressions.

Chill in air and
voice, now not
so close by.
A statue,
moss-greened
standing in shade,
water pouring from
its urn.

A resisting odor
of pine-tar
soap, a country smell,
pine-paneled.
Where angles mean
little, unsure even
of their structural
function.

Red, yellow, green, blue
Kandinsky do, do
tell why colors
mean
and the universe
shapes its way.