I learned the difference between a spruce and a fir
By noting the needles—
Your long grey fingers clasping
The softer not so conical shape of the fir
—Now my favourite evergreen
In the woods death is not so lonely or drab
Whisking past the brush in her damsel gown
A spectacle against the sepia terrain
Why wouldn’t we pause here
In the crackling certainty of an exploration
Where we are amiss and straggling
As two sheared cowards slit from the neck down
We should depend on the tattling juncos
For our own incongruities
For the weeping birch on your shoulder
That grows forceps and claims the sparkle
Of each solitary crystal of cooling
Poetry on
We were oceans apart when
I met you on my way to a blackened hell
You swept by me a wingless angel
And pulled me up
To keep me from sinking
I sat on invisible alae
Stunned by your strength
You carried me to loftier dreams
While I scattered old dead skin
Like fragile snowflakes
Pale white shells
Floated down
Lighting up the sky
And drifted from memory
Like a cold winter song
Skimming, dancing, flitting
As broken pebbles do
We smiled and wondered
On whose tongue they would fall
The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad, Fall 2001 and translated for Iranian cultural magazine
A Path For Trees
There’s a photograph of two rows of trees
and in between a path like a road
cosseted by the fleece of falling snow
impressed on us alone
I wonder how we can say with certainty
the trees were planted in this fashion
or why we choose to imagine a footpath
carved for us alone
When at the end of the open living space
our eyes are deceived by shadiness
under rows and rows of further pines
fixed for us alone
Nothing is said of our trodden thoughts
expect nothing on the far-off walk
except for the long and lone way out
for us and us alone