Two Poems

Fledges

That was the year fledges dropped

like peaches

The dog killed one

The lawnmower another

That was the year of the 72-hour hold

That was the year your stepmother

was pregnant                                 and you ran away

your note said

to drown yourself

in a deep mountain lake

You said      My body will never be found                                  You said      Don’t look for me

Oh birdie

Oh child for whom we circled and called

These torn nests

how alike to one another they all appear

when the birds are gone

in fall

Mistakes I Made

Son, red-eyed
from visiting stoner cousins,
announces

his grand ambition:
ski patroller,
shares his resistance

to college.
I should have raised him
Mormon,

or something.
Instead I taught him
evergreen whispers,

moonlight on a tilting
meadow, the holy feeling
of the powder turn.