The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Doris Lynch

FIRST SNOWFALL: TAOS

I want to package this day

inside a transparent envelope:

big, lopey snowflakes,

cottonwood bark dressed in rime

wind cascading down from el monte sagrado

as flurries mix with gilded aspen leaves.

Cold so biting and fierce that my friend,

met by chance on Montoya Street,

cocoons her miniature Dachshund protectively

inside her coat.  "Too bitter for him. I sent my husband

home for the Volvo." We wait on the corner

of Kit Carson Rd. as clouds quilt earth

and one small dog seeks solace

inside a womb of down.

BIBLICAL FOG

            Joe Lynch (1926-2008)

Two months after

your death, a swathe

of fog over the neighbor's

field reminds me

of Moses's hair.

Fiercely white, shimmering,

offering a direct line to God

whose thunderous voice

reminds me of your Irish tirades

that sent us kids scurrying

to our shared beds or the prickly

woods behind Center Square Green

where our unskipped stones                        

created rock graves on the silty

bottom of Neshaminy Creek. 

Those days, I tried so hard to be good:

report card A's, rosary beads clacked

hard, Hoover wheeled out for every

Saltine crumb, heavy trashcans

hauled down to the curb.

Succeeded too well.

Too bad, both you

and I would

have preferred

a real renegade.

Someone who spurned

Moses's hair, preferring

to hack her way up

briar-clogged, gnat-whirled

Skunk Mountain.