The storms that make it into poems most often
leave something like disaster in their wake:
the wine-glass elms in pieces on the lawn,

I hold my brother’s daughter in my lap
and clip her fingernails. She sits expectant
and will not be distracted from the unfolding

You hoarded oyster shells through the R months;
they jut from the backyard garden like unwashed ears
of earth, and listen to your footsteps growing heavier.