How to make a vortex

Place a clock on a shelf for a least two weeks

Look at the clock and trust that it knows time

Allow life to continue, forget about the clock but continue to glance its way: make sandwiches, fill glasses with water, scatter and gather toys

One night, remove the clock

You will find yourself turning your head and searching for the time
The clock wants to get back up on the shelf but is locked in the closet
Now the missing clock wants your gaze

Maybe the poem can be

the prints skittering across the snow-skinned yard

and the wondering about the small body who produced them

The melting artifact with the teeming forest breathing in its ear

Magic Markers

Magic Markers

Make a thing

a snow globe

a chart with names of humans
who didn’t know
they would be related to you

a quiche

a drawing with Magic Markers
magical because of how each stem
keeps its own color
a bud vase in bloom

a bad birdhouse
that birds won’t touch

a plain birdhouse
that is dry inside
well-visited by every bird

Each thing a vision

a doll-sized sarcophagus
a wooden box
clay pinch pot

a way to make the world small
a way to ask
isn’t this what we both know