2 Poems  

Mortar

Among the lost artifacts, lost or stolen, 
include one substantial mortar 
worn as smooth as river rock 
in much less time 
by rough little hands pounding acorns. 
Squash-yellow stone, it was heavier 
than some of the stubby women 
who must have left it behind every spring 
when they trekked to the hills 
and found it when they came back down 
to winter camp‚ unmolested 
for a thousand years. 

Someone plowing not far from here 
turned it up two generations ago, 
and you could always find it 
near the leaning pine 
under the overgrown shrubbery, 
ignored until I wrestled it out 
last summer and put it on display. 
Mistake.  Now it's gone, 
snatched by an activist 
with ten percent indigenous blood, 
hauled off by a drunk in a pick-up 
to grace his back porch, 
or by the thatch-headed brothers next door, 
just because.  Who knows? 

But that primal kitchen utensil 
is out there somewhere, 
not really lost and nobody's property, 
still occupying its allotted space and time 
with millenniums to go before it finally cracks, 
crumbling into gravel and then sand‚ 
long after we've all gone 
where those transient acorn eaters went. 



  

Homecoming
 

Out in the hills east of town, 
a wind no one remembers 
has come home tonight 
to find nothing changed. 

One generation of grass 
is like another, and if 
the stones have lost anything, 
it's imperceptible. 

This wind has run errands 
for all sorts of weather, 
shuffled the paperwork of autumn, 
and spun out of control 

with the profligate dust. 
It has suffered humid fevers 
and lived to choke on sand; 
it has learned to flay clouds. 

All of this in my lifetime 
while I've been blown 
from joy to grief and back, 
from paycheck to paycheck, 

knowing some of the ills 
grass is heir to, 
as well as its green pleasures, 
and the slow osmosis of love. 

Tonight I lie here and listen 
to the wind howl its name, 
insisting that I admire 
its raw nerve, its wanderlust. 

But I'm too tired and need 
a dark, deeper place to go. 
I sink my fingers into sleep 
like roots, and I hold on.