You Be the Judge

In response to a Middle English facsimile of the Gospel of Luke

The minims of textualis crowd themselves,
ascenders aplenty but descenders few,
into Wycliffe’s words of Gabriel to Mary:
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The nameless cream-colored tom creeps quickly up
and crouches motionless, knowing that the bowl
of the birdbath keeps him concealed from the finch
which perches on the far side, dipping its beak
into the pool of clear water—dipping and preening.

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A valve by any other name
would not check love less sweetly:

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My dusty green
      second-hand
            campchair
is planted in
      weedy gravel
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for Jon Hawley, the Armchair Traveler

Four years old,
     and I’ve already been schooled.

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after Mary Powell

The matron’s eyes are dark, and hollow.
Her skirt is an indistinct pleated gray,
while a darted white blouse billows
below the boat-necked breast
and above an elasticized waist.
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after the lady Skagit

Sunlight floods half the road on which I travel;
a shadow cast by the guardrail obscures my lane—
the westbound side, which rushes past bitterbrush,
bluebunch wheat grass, ponderosa, and sandstone.
This Methow thirst can consume entire rivers.

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(after Francis Thompson)

Imagine a night sky in the Barrens
      without the North Star.

Imagine that Zeus had never thrown
      Callisto into the sky,
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Orchards hang in the evening air,
splayed along alluvial bottomland
like sagging, vast, corporeal mists,
ordered rows of sentient sentinels.

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