Three Poems

November and a full moon encircled by a green ring: sure sign of rain in three days or, if the cold front swaggers through this door of weather, ice or snow.

Expect shine of eyes in the yaupon thicket, deer or coon or the ghosts of kin.

Listen for the caterwaul of bobcat or panther’s howl in the deep piney woods,

sung like real blues by the old widow who, God knows how many generations, is the voice who knells the dead her way. She’s at the ring’s edge, stirring the pot

that conjures the future, gathers souls like ripe berries in wicker covered over in flannel, then ladles them into a bitter syrup you pour upon your breakfast to last your day.

Everyone knows it is not rain nor the circle the dead ring around the living but faith the tradition will stand that we make of living and loving.

It is the message she sings on the sky: It is a horse, black like the sun, its blaze doused in tears.

It is best to hear the news, so she sings:

It is a horse, calm like rock.

The rain will be the river’s source.

The rain will slide from the rock and run. What river do you feed?

What sky weeps for you?

What is the tub you wash your hands and face in? The old woman sends us to sleep, this her prayer:

There is a drop of my blood in your morning’s coffee. Drink. You must cherish me always if the rain will come. Drink.

The green ring spins about the moon, horse in a round pen, the moon like a man long dead with a longe line and a whip driving it like a clock.

The sky, for all the ice glittering, is dust and seconds falling away. The conjurer beats a percussion. It comes like a cloak of thunder.