Family Cabin in a Coal Town

Lightning Bugs

At summer’s first flash,
we scare up a mason jar
from its dirt cellar, punch air holes
with a butcher knife. We swipe
at blackness and snap lids,
snaring an immeasurable cosmos
that blinks steady comfort
on night tables, off and on
like my uncle’s turn signal
before it gave out. The glass
burns to gray ash while we sleep,
missing the dim throb
of final light. Last times are like that,
a loved one waits for the room
to empty, then dies. And though 
we intend to set the bugs loose,
we forget, slipping out of sight
ourselves, as the sky beyond
keeps coming in dark waves.

Family Cabin in a Coal Town

Backed up to brambles, tar paper
turns slick crimson from rain,
ores of iron. Ghosts of tenant labor
climb roof to sky, where

a small, dark head of chimney
pokes up, watching the road–
which was not a road when it was built,
but dirt trail or horse path.

I don’t know its history,
the mountain cuts off light by noon,
and that is that, rooms doused,
windows never lit, porches never

whining under cane rockers.
That’s how quickly a home becomes
a shroud, vines of dusty flowers
climbing a cold stove. I brush

off the grate, the bent pipe,
look for what’s lost, believing
like the bright, blue morning glories
who can find most anything.

Box Fan

You can find one in a junk store
fifty years old, still oscillating,
gristled cord that begs
the question of what lasts?
Yearly, my dad wedges our fan
in a window, blowing outward
at night, to pale trysts of moths,
swearing it pulls air inside.
Its voice of cool dust
softens edges of knives and tables,
sharp things that cannot hurt us,
padded in gauzes of breeze.
And so much humming! Cicada

scales, oiled blades, my mother’s
absent drone as we put away work,
undressing the day. Our house sleeps hard,
breathes like a child pressed by
August heat. If there is allegory
in the wheel’s spin—If, in fact
its small motor turns the stars
or some larger axis,
none of us is the wiser, caught up
in shucking corn, snaps of beans
for canning, left to dry on towels
at night, in the wind my father
turns inside out.

September

Hurricanes move up the coast,
inland in waves of salted clouds,
breezes strum gray washboard
tunes on sentries of summer’s end.
But softer, this sea wind,
you listen to it pull fine
twine through muted forms and figures,
giving them voice. Walnuts whistle
as they roll, the cast-off cinder block
hums in baritone from weeds,
Wing-stem sheds its singing fringe,
adding to layers of leaves, the path
home blurred as water.
That’s when you stand castaway,
hearing first, the raven’s ruffled crown,
then the ridges and grooves
of crickets, the light hiss of fences,
played and giving way, then finally
the larger song beneath it all.