Four Poems

When the Girls Arrived in Copenhagen

and left the station, near midnight,
snow fell in soft piles on their hats
and backpacks.

No cars or people passed
while they walked
down the hushed streets.

Through windows without blinds or curtains
they could see Danes bathed in blue
television light

or quietly reading in uncluttered rooms
small novels perhaps about two girls
long ago walking through snow.

Sign

After long walks down sandy power-line cuts
looking
for wolf tracks

I hear
of a pile of scat on a trail to the bog
and find

turd shaped clumps of deer fur
filled
with ragged pieces of bone.

At the Flower Merchant’s in Toulouse

Basques and Spaniards, French peasants
not a generation removed from dirt floors
and speaking the old language of the South

yell at each other in the warehouse
beside the railroad tracks
where the flower wholesaler won’t give me work

among all the red and yellow blossoms
brought north through the night
that must get cut

then wrapped before they wilt
and where scents rise in a mix strong enough
to turn the whole place quiet.

A Return

When she bent over the twins
who were sleeping on the floor,
I thought that the sadness
and wisdom of her trip
still clung to her and hoped
for the time that would arrive
soon enough when she could be silly
again, loveably ordinary,
and I could look at her unafraid.