Three Poems

I thought of Lot’s wife

And thinking back, I recall not salt but snow
and my feet are still rooted in the woods
on the edges of our playground.

The older girls who traded wisdom like cigarettes,
told you not to walk through the trees,
then named the girls who did.

I remember what our park looked like at night,
how different it seemed the next morning.

Most of all: that winter everything froze over:
roads closed, no schools, no Sunday kirk.
In the river, a whole salmon lay face-up,
its body trapped in the top layer of ice.


The Forest Past the School

where
          rooks came to crack the acorns;
...