Park

Sundays, after breakfast
we go to the park instead of church.

The park did not invite us
and felt put upon.

Its interest was in birds
especially flocks.

Enough of us responded
to meet-up text messages

that we began to resemble
a flock of geese.

The park complained
our outfits were not uniform

and the girls should not be wearing
manly bright mating colors.

In an effort to appease the park
we began singing

love songs to attract a mate
though none of us

intended to nest
where the park could observe

eggs hatching
or the antics of fledglings.

It Is The Grave In Blossom

It is the old loneliness
that crushes the Conquistadors:

the murder of the sleeping,
the unsung martyrs.

My country of white sands,
of fractured glass sheen,

failed to mark the Athabaskan
migration, the old grave locations.

It is like the Roman
to forget the Etruscan,

to build on the bones
of slaughtered towns,

to construct paved roads
over grass-edged paths

that once lead to deer herds,
to flocks that blackened the sky.