when you play prodigal red returns spent the Panamanian moon sings the blues I hear you signify Satchmo cradle him in your arms time hovers in indigo things become clear when you play you invite ancestors old as water cajole and coax the dead with your breath your hummingbird hands suck sugar from spruce cedar poplar beech ebony pray your body when you play rosary of shadows repent nomadic notes come home air is sanctified you turn the endpin slap the strings straight from New Orleans you are my bridge isthmus between then and now you shut down water between oceans in this ruined house jacaranda blossoms armadillos cross over crimson tanager sings when you play I feel righteous thankful greedy want to be baptized wade in

...for Sam and Jake I pray to the moss green rhododendron asking for more scarlet blooms. I beseech the silent azalea masking vermillion to sing hallelujah’s when my time comes. If praying is talking to someone other than my self I ask the hybrid climbing hydrangea to wrap around my heart breaking it open. I’m in love with the one who returns in petals and as I watch the japanese maple undress for winter slipping out of a russet kimono covering my garden in silk I am saved. If the Qu’ran says a garden is a reminder of paradise then I am a Muslim giving reverence to one hundred fiery tulips to be delivered from the frigid earth under my knees. * Rawdiya is a genre of poetry known as “garden poems.”

- for BJ and the women in the visiting room, State Correctional Institution, Graterford, PA In front of the backdrop: palm trees surf, corrugated sand, your right hand around my waist, my hands clasp your left hand. The photographer says Relax smile. Every other Sunday I take a numbered metal tag from a stack, wait for your name to be called. I'm searched for contraband; gum, Kleenex, breath mints my hand stamped for entry, your number and my time of arrival printed on your permission slip to the visiting room. Jump suits now you tell me guys hiding things . We buy coffee, chips and chicken wings from the automat, the tokens imprinted with Today Is My Lucky Day. You balance the tray on your knees, share the food. Enough babe? Opposite a woman is stroking her husband's cock a toddler asleep in his arms. I hear the honk of Canada Geese on their way south, then north south. After next month, you tell me, only twenty-five more weeks. Please don't cry this time, you ask. Ice crackles under the tires. In the rearview mirror the prison is a fungus. I marvel that no matter how many times you hear the geese, not see the curve of wings or imprint of their V in the sky, you still care they come back, still wait for the sound. I think of you in your cell turning the calendar given to you by the Salvation Army, checking the swatch of sky each day for the language of clouds.