I refuse memory.
I refuse family—
medicated calls and crisis,
the toll of fault and fatuous grievance.
I refuse the rage of roots—
Georgia in the '30s, orphaned in East Texas.
I refuse the reeling, beery wandering, 
the hunched, whispered complaint
that is fatherhood, that is motherhood.
I resist dreaming. 
Night thoughts are steel schools and decay,
humiliations, 
loosed, wispy cries from the failed, the dead.
In refusal, in resistance,
I claim the night hunter's field,
summer's vespertine avenue
as room to move, to rise.


A Mystery of Seasons
(for JBR)

All tender words are yours.
All words that cherish,
that linger as enchantment, 
as conjured charms of light.
All tenderness is yours—
a language luminous, soaring
that melds sight to sonnet for lyric sky,
weaves actions with a whispered prayer for peace.
All words of beauty are yours-
season's rest of snow on barren winter limb, 
the deepening hush of sun's wane to shadow's etch,
a rising mist of rain scattered upon the sea.
All words of mine are yours—
all diamonds, all honey, 
metered, epic, elegant,
are yours.