Fossil, and: City Lights, and: Spring Rain, and: Wednesday Afternoon, and: Wheels, and: After Joseph, and: Into your pocket

• Fossil
• Christina Hutchins

If I cast the news of my immanent completionupon the last winds of April, will Maysally forth resplendent as the days? & if my workremains yet undone, will I still see God's joy?If I have all beauty of the carillon at noon

poured over the library lawn, wooden windowsof the Wheeler building raised, the sashes wide,marble steps worn to their curves of love,will the yet unmade stopper my ears & mufflethe ring of my feet on the stair? I love feathers

in flight, their quip of the air, & I love the dead.But what of the curled creature never becomewho yesterday rested in my palm? A hundred & thirtymillion years of waiting, the egg had been crackedfrom within & yet, unbroken, was turned to stone.

• City Lights
• Christina Hutchins

twisted up from below. We painted without movingour hands. As streams red & cream surged up& down Van Ness, the same systole & diastolerested its pulse on my back. You copied meatop myself so we were a person in twolayers, night & its shadow, indivisibleuntil ever so gently your body began to swaywith mine to fall & rise with heat to praisethe stillness, until it turned, & I turn, & the city'sentire quiet light from this height slowlyturns, pale green stems growing through the leavingnight. I want to know what dark timemight do: today resting on the awakening bodyof tomorrow, passing between them, our heat.

• Spring Rain
• Christina Hutchins

There is no reason to quell the singing.While I work, plums bloom in the rain.The bobbin-thread emerges from below,adds the understitch, grounds the seam.

How long each leaf will spend becomingmerely itself & still I trust summerwill swell the branches! No force but love-making& such as take the time joy requires.

Cough & all, I took you to walkthe morning rains: umbrellas & Steller's jaysstriped blue & black floated now& then beside us…

The world's all one eye, & I'm a mote.Seeming to swim a surface, I pass underthe iris, dive & touch the deep membraneof sight. We shall lose it: world,

plums, the anticipation of shade, & the hotdays themselves, the light. Stone wallswe climbed & held to with half-fists, the damp.Cones & nerves, puddles, glister of oil

& the pure new streams. After a childhooduntangling the bobbin-thread, I can pickany word from the dictionary as our guidethrough the spending of this day. Boom

goes the pile-driver across the bay.Let it sing bass in the bridge-building night.Glad the roil of pushed-aside bedclothes,we have our dark passages already.

• Wednesday Afternoon
• Christina Hutchins

Driving uphill, the beams of the day perch warmon the thighs of my jeans. Behind me, so manysuns climb the hill, one entiresun to every windshield. Together they riselike the trumpet section, who, when they stand

press brass to their lips & will their bodies to bellows.Right foot on the brake, left on the clutch,I might sit at this stop sign forever, & I thinkI know that woman crossing in front of me.At least I know her stride. She loves whatever

she carries, & her hair, loose, is so much justanother tree full-leaved with wind as she turnsdown the hill. I know she must hearthe vernal rush intimate beside her ears.If we are rafts, one for another's glory, clearly

it is her turn to be hoisted high & into the boat,vested with blooms & medals, every smallsun lifted from its slant of glass& set upon her breast. All our uncagedyearnings, even my want of you, are small

birds flying to nest in the auburn leavesof a head so bold it's abandoned anxiety over the topof the rise, & now, purposefully, is bearing us,down, toward the root of the hill. Like rain,both the quick & the dead gather...