for Lori

todays update is from Humbly I Offer These Awkward Poems - unpublished manuscript. it was accepted and - then ... well, life lesson #767, don't count your chickens, i guess. it was written to my sister, Lorraine Gail, who died far too young .... a far greater travesty than not getting a bunch of poems published i suspect.


FOR LORI - version two
-after Czeslaw Milosz

i will put poppy seeds cracked corn,
for the dead,
who will return as birds
may be nourished.

but the thistle seed
in the old china cup
from grandmother's hutch
i saved for you,
redwing blackbird, gone
before the sky knew your song.