Bree- Three Poems

a ring made by my very compass

i spread wide the legs of my compass

to draw a bigger ring.
your half moon inset like a child's
treasure-map,

i am enframed by the vault of your sealing.
with salient angels tongue-kissing, their

backs pressed gently against
these are some
hills, alright.

i enclose the spur projecting from
your mountainside with my moleskin.

so far this life

we walk between the mud fortresses of crawdads, hairy
coyote scat, and whatever leaves are leftover
from the forest
comes an awfully strange-sounding bird,
turns out to be a fox squirrel, hyperbolic.
turtle shells gleam white in the distance, i mistake them, as
well, for wood ducks this time, until they slip their shells
easily into their private little lunettes
on the lake
red wands, green hands withhold tadpoles, and spread leafy
abundance as if to urge on their nets of gold like it had been
spring forever, not just since
the Easter bells
rang in my heart, deafening, and emboldened by sensitive
moss, and the earliest tan ive managed, this life,
i get on my knees
in the cool mud to photograph bronzed knees of bald cypress.

Saint Clement

Clement the First was banished from Rome; he broke rocks
on the chain-gang. All of the prisoners were very thirsty
when he spotted a lamb on a bluff, and went up
there to give it a kiss.

He dug his feet into the ground. Had a brainstorm.
Came back with a shovel, this time, and dug until
he found a great reservoir of water.

All the prisoners arrived with bowls and mugs. The pagan
ones converted on the spot.  Authorities did not care for
the little escapade, however. So they took him out
pretty far past the broke walls and tied him to an anchor,
which sank him to early death.

Each year the sea opens like curtains drawn by
ibis to reveal relic shrine of his bones to the people.