I Learn to Count My father’s hands were so big he could hold four eggs in each one. One by one, then by twos as my hands grew, I placed the eggs into the yellow wire basket, gently, finding the lowest spot— otherwise they would roll down, smack against each other. If a hen was fluffed on the nest, I would pull my sleeve over my hand, sneak toward her back end. Under the hot feathers— a gathering of round, warm treasure— ...seventy-eight, seventy-nine. We counted close to a hundred eggs, but we stayed in a trance of now, each egg, each nest a moment— slow dance of harvest, heavy miracle— the basket filled.

Let Me Live Alone Beside This Lake Let me live alone beside this lake to pass my time in peace and never think of money. Give me good red wine to drink, and only things of beauty will I make. Let me be awakened by the sun each morning as it peeks in through the pines, and may I, on my canvas or in lines composed, redeem the day till evening's done. Let me in this cottage be complete, enraptured by the lark and whippoorwill, the loon and mourning dove. Let all be still; no earthly song could ever sound so sweet.

Pigeon Flying The birds stir on their terrace loft. Their cooing wakes me up, cutting out the friction of cars on the tarmac below. The browns are inherited from Grandpa who broke his thumb in college and stayed home. The greys are fat with neglect and trip during ascent. I stole money for their feed from my mother's purse. The speckled ones are new: still sore and stiff—fly only if nudged. Father set the TV volume loud all day, every day. My neighbour-turned-therapist says: *Let it all go.* I unlatch the coop and with meditative flaps, they overcome the sky. I sit on the terrace edge retracing their flight until the sun perches on the horizon and the clouds turn rowdy—they all flutter back like a panic attack. Each of my pigeons is a racing homer; fear always finds its way back home.

Grace The Holy Ghost came as gold in the dim church— it grew in leaves, curling from the wall like burning paper, dropped, flowed, spread past the pews, licked around the doorframe and flew. On the street it slid beneath the feet of passersby, jumped and fell down stone facades like rain, flashed from streetlamps in disguise. Then all was quiet. A paper pamphlet clicked against a pew. A priest’s sleeve rustled. Then all was deep, and wide, and open.

From a Distant Country A man arrived from a distant country to appear in my dreams. His face was a heap of leaves; his body was a mountain of mud; he walked like a fortified forest, arms flailing, feet staggering. He said my life expired the day I was born and I lived on borrowed days. I refused to pay interest to him while he waited for me to return it. Each day I continue to live without interest is like a thick nail piercing his palms. How must I pay interest, when I did not know him? There was a blitz behind him, an unfolding of white papers, a scroll and a screen through the leaves, like a television in a garden. I saw in his face a film of all the days I went out and returned with a crushed face; my eyes were black and red, my body was a sinking sack of sand. Each day, my face is a bombed field, I grind my teeth like a dark street. A smile and a heart of gratitude are the interest I need. I decided to clean up my winter mess and become someone new, someone prepared to render my interest, each passing day, every fleeting second.