As a child, sitting in front of
the bookcases at home,
I often revisited Beth’s death,
in Little Women, that morning in May

I’m out for a walk along the bluffs overlooking Vineyard Sound / To shake off the grip of premonition, of ominous threat.

One winter I rented a house, high on a hill in Chilmark, overlooking the Atlantic. The sun came and went. The ocean changed from grey to green to blue, white caps here and there, now and then.

Down in the lower woodlot, the woodcutter / whirls his chainsaw through the wreckage of of fallen logs scattered like pick-up sticks.

The low profile of the mainland / Across Vineyard Sound / Swims into focus.

“The Ukraine crisis is something we don’t want to see.”

—Xi Jinping

A slant of light on a winter afternoon
Illumines a two-foot pine sapling
I forgot I planted at the lawn’s edge.
In my mind’s eye: I accept from
Someone’s hands the tiny tree,
Roots swaddled in a plastic bag.
I transport it from somewhere
And plant it at home on the Vineyard,
Heaping soil around the base, then
Forgetting about it until a ray of light
Points to a tree tall enough for me to see
From the windows of my study.

In a long row of pots along the side of the station / Blooms the garden of the garage’s mechanic.

I wrote about hawks once before when they were nesting and feeding their fledglings.