Imaginary Paintings 6 How Would I Paint the Big Lie <small>Smooth, and deceptively small so that it can be swallowed like something we take for a col… - Lisel Mueller

On Finding a Bird's Bones in the Woods
Even Einstein, gazing
at the slender ribs of the world,
...even he, unlearning
the bag and baggage of notion,
must have kept some shred
in which to clothe that shape,
as we, who cannot escape
...swaddle
this tiny world of bone
in all that we have known...

In the Thriving Season
<small>In memory of my mother.</small>
Now she catches fistfuls of sun
...My first child in her first spring
stretches bare hands back to your darkness
and heals your silence...

Place and Time
...We're all pillars of salt.
...Where does the music come from
and where does it go when it's over—
the child's unanswered question
about more than music.
My mother is dead, and the piano
...burned with our city in World War II.
...it's still her black Bechstein
each concert pianist plays for me
and... her... fingers
are behind each virtuoso performance
on the stereo, giving me back
my prewar childhood city
intact and real.