in the golden light of ponds
glide a pair of teethed swans
terrible in graceful white
gods above a liquid aether
slicing through reflected light

water lilies' roots hang down
like an unseen fibrous crown
grasping what is real beneath, their
hands of beauty and of sleight
steady as a mystic tether

i cannot deny two worlds;
surface ripples are a dirge
for a mayfly meeting night
or a tadpole in rebirth, her
forming eyes sense golden light

andy said her fingers knitted
flower coronation
for her hair
at the park as his song
pulled at the hudson's water

like the fingers pulling thread
for clothing her grandchildren
in a quilt, patterned after
a midwestern love
the earth raked and laden.

both are strong and bittersweet,
the violence of a howitzer
in the distance now
rattling windows in their frame
deeper than foundations.

while brooklyn falls for easy girls
flood gentrification
the moma yearns for
the upper room of kansas,
grain silos with her kernel

truthful wheat, unadorned
like strong hands plucking strings
spaced like the rows
and wrought bones of the house
where she sleeps on the plain.