possession

We are at the cider mill, which has become a massive festival of blow-up toys and pay-as-you-go corrals, the sale of cider, doughnuts and apples apparently insufficient.

The two babies are happy to be outside on their mommies' bosoms in identical, identifiable Ergo carriers, blissfully unaware of economics. 

Distancing ourselves from the festival of apples and pumpkins, we go for a walk on a path along the woods. James, two and a half, straddles Grandpa's shoulders. Grandpa plucks a hickory nut from a tree. "Look, this is a hickory nut, James." 

James takes and throws it indignantly back into the woods. "That is not our own!"

Then Grandpa breaks a small dead branch off a tree and hands it to James, now on the ground, to walk with. Instantly James throws it back. "That is not our own!"

The grassy road undulates ahead, woods on the left, a field of corn on the right. Grandpa picks an ear of dry corn and hands it to James. "That is not our own!" and he throws it back. Grandpa goes and picks up the corn where it landed. "Maybe you can just carry it a while and throw it back later."

And so he begins to eat the dried, borrowed corn. 

Arranging stones: poems and quilts

A tiny airliner

crosses the sky,

slicing 

without sound.

I type one

more word

on the page

and the seam closes.

Indian muslin

sewn to

French toile

means that pale young boys

play with a dog

in a beautiful garden

of dark-leafed paisley.

We pry

stones apart

just wide enough

to let another thing

live

and with all

that is in our power

sew them

together:

this scar

that is

ourselves.