The milk and eggs
on the shopping list
are not ornate, but necessary.

****************
The last bits of snow and ice
that hide in shadows and ditches,
like glacial remnants,
melt slowly to feed the fingerlakes
and other tributaries.

****************

In a basket of copper coins,
a quarter sits wedged,
ridge to surface,
but will be plucked out
and placed with others
of its own kind
for snacks, laundry
and games of chance.

****************

The door latch clicks
on the sliding glass door
to the back porch,
but she stills sees
the stack of opened mail on the kitchen counter
and the half-finished cup of ginseng tea.

Mine is like the rain,
as it hits panes of glass
with taps and ratamacues.
Filling the world with noise,
drops thin out to coat the façade
of bended light and twisted landscape.

Hers is like gently falling snow,
as whispered from a warm, moist maw
into the cold.
When we speak a lover’s name,
flecks linger in the still air,
even past the time when we speak it
over and again.

They hoard space and hold fast
to the distal points of sticks and stems
and gather in the recesses of window frames.