Above a pond, I sit on a wooden bench
and throw pebbles into the willows.

A rush of sunlight and wind creates a path in a channel of water, dances
between the melting ice and brown islands of bulrush.

The resident osprey, its eyes the color of yellow grass,
follows my tossing hand.

Love is a diorama of inner life in an outer world.

I look down and find a chunk of fossilized rock
with an entire Paleozoic shell sticking out.

I am not afraid of love, but terrified of how it is my steady guide.

Once, when tired, I wandered off the trail and crawled under a tree to rest.

I woke to a young brown bear licking my boot.
Nothing had ever felt that good.

When I say I love you, what I mean is I wouldn’t leave you.

Even if love is not loved back it doesn’t go away,
although it may become a black hole.

Could this be what it’s like for trees to lose the green from their leaves?

At noon the light shifts and the pond turns
into a mosaic of opaque green ice.

Orange carp rise in these cold watery chambers to breathe at the surface.

Always I am in love. Face to face with the sun. Face to face with the moon.

In class today,
We mused on Janie and Tea Cake
And how love saves and wounds.

And I said,
Who is Janie’s true love?
And they said,

Tea Cake.
And I said
Are you sure?

And Eboni said,
She love herself like she ’posed to.
She wanted to be like the bee and the flower

But her granny wouldn’t let her.
And we all nodded.
Logan treated her like a mule

And Joe like a doll baby
And Tea Cake was her
Bae. But in the end

She come back home.
And I said
Is this the end of the story?

And Chynna said,
Naw, she ain’t but forty’
It’s just the beginning

Janie got money, and a house
And she ain’t studyin’ nothin’.