NIGHT SHIFTS
The lake is cold when the ducks have flown.
What goes away is what you can't retrieve.
Night shifts a little closer to the bone.Dreams glisten like feathers and are blown
against the shore. You see and hear them leave.
The lake is cold when the ducks have flown.The time has come to question all you own;
small things are gone and bright things can deceive.
Night shifts a little closer to the bone.Is it enough to claim you've been alone?
You tighten into what you must perceive:
the lake is cold when the ducks have flown.This landscape is as true as all you've known.
Some time is spent in learning how to grieve.
Night shifts a little closer to the bone.Slack gone, you cherish water, air and stone.
At dusk and dawn you focus and believe
the lake is cold when the ducks have flown.
Night shifts a little closer to the bone.
HOMECOMINGThe salmon moves from
sea to spawning ground
not taking food
once streams have cut
the salt
of his quick blood.Hook-jawed, beached
on a sandbar,
He is greeted
by the applause
of descending
wings.
IMMIGRANT
Do you think this desert has no life?
Look smaller, or higher, or slower.
You are heir to a lean land
where all that grows has armor.The heart winters in a quiet place.
What it knows of drought or dunes
is blood-deep and irrevocable.
Your kin will find you.
TO POETS SEEKING HELP
You are a fox
laired in a hidden burrow.
Feral and quick,
you run too much in the dark.You raid the neighbors' farms.
Don't ask
what to do about
the feathers on your muzzle.
REVISED STANDARD VERSION OF THE BIBLE
They are kind, the ones who gentle words for me,
turning a sounding brass into a noisy gong,
turning charity into love.They are kind, the ones who veil the glass
into which I would see
darkly.They are kind, the ones who make
god small enough
for me.
© Pat Hathaway