Prologue:
The season’s new, the world is wide awake
with morning songs, and ground about to break,
and sun, in which I’ve little time to bask
considering my list of vernal tasks.
1. April Fool’s Day
Salt in a sugar bowl,
new product launches,
blockbuster trades,
winning lottery tickets,
balloon-filled rooms,
boasts and confessions,
bizarre memos and stolen cars ..
<yawn>
2. The Sinful Woman (Luke 7:36-50)
A pharisee named Simon hosted Jesus at his house;
a sinful woman came and stood among them, unannounced.
She held an alabaster jar of premium perfume,
then knelt, to the surprise of every person in the room,
wept openly without concern for who could see or hear,
and kissed the feet of Jesus as she washed them with her tears.
She dried them with her hair and poured the perfume on them too,
and Simon thought, “dear Lord, do you not know who’s touching you?”
But Jesus knew his thoughts and said, “take heed to what I say:
Two debtors owed a banker money – neither one could pay.
The first man owed him fifty coins, the second, that times ten;
the banker, very moved, forgave the debts of both the men.
Which man would love the banker more?” the Lord asked of his host,
and Simon said, “it surely was the man who owed the most.”
Then Jesus said, “you’re right. Behold, this woman on the floor.
You had no water for my feet when I came through your door,
but she has washed them with her tears, and dried them with her hair.
You didn’t kiss me on the cheek, you had no oil to spare,
but ever since she sought me out and came into the room
she’s kissed my feet continually and doused them with perfume.
Because she’s been forgiven much, her love is well expressed,
while those forgiven little tend to love a little less.”
He caused a minor stir among attendees at the feast
by telling her, “your sins have been forgiven. Go in peace.”
3. Good Friday
The bindweed’s deep roots –
my sinful nature.
4. For My Mother On Her Birthday
She was born
and she died.
In between,
she made the world better.
5. Easter
Carry me, Lord.
You carried my cross
and bore my grief,
and I have nothing to offer
but weight and sorrow.
6. Artemis
The moon poses for pictures,
her dark side visible.
She has no secrets now.
7. 10,000 Steps
Every week day, fewer on weekends.
Feet have a certain amount of steps,
legs a set number of ladder climbs,
hips only so much sway and push,
and I spend most of my allotment
performing all the necessary tasks
that make enjoyable things possible.
At night I walk out to find only the moon
and pavement, quiet and still but for wind.
I think of how much time I am away,
and wonder if I have enough steps left
to run all the way home to you.
8. Webcast
The diligence and empathy
practiced by employees
of a dying company
makes me want to be better.
9. In Memory Of
I am afraid to write this.
If there had been an app
to tell you where demons hid,
to warn you of dragons
in the bowels of earth,
the devils in mid-air,
the beasts on a train,
you could have stayed behind
to argue with a co-worker,
or climbed to the roof
to gaze at Orion the Hunter
forever facing down Scorpius.
You might have discerned
when to wait, to stop, to run.
But death is not always genteel,
refined, impeccably dressed,
patiently checking his watch –
sometimes he just wants
to make examples of people,
terrorize us with randomness
to remind us of his relevance.
For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.
10. Components Of Tears
Lipids keep them from drying too quickly,
so we can savor them.
Water washes away debris and microbes,
so we can be pure.
Mucin helps them stick evenly to the eye,
so we can know them fully.
It’s hard to hold them back,
harder to let them go;
we are quick to wipe them away,
afraid to let anyone see.
11. Eden
My tiller
has a safety switch,
a lever connected to a cable
connected to a governor.
If it starts to get away
I just let go and it stops.
But the weeds, the thistle –
they never stop.
12. Tulips
Cups of gold are filled with sun
like fancy little cocktails.
We drink them with our eyes
and then they are gone.
13. Kingsport
I didn’t know him.
He battled cancer courageously,
was a lifelong resident,
graduated from the high school,
class of ’99,
worked at the plant;
I didn’t know him,
but he loved the Tennessee Vols,
the Boston Red Sox,
motorcycles, woodworking,
kayaking with his dad,
retro toy collectibles;
I didn’t know him,
but he was a true friend,
a genuine person,
preceded in death by his father,
grandparents, an aunt and uncle,
survived by his mother;
I don’t know her,
but I remember
when my uncle died at 25,
my grandmother’s shattered heart,
her love like a wounded bird
with nowhere to land;
I didn’t know him,
but he is survived by sisters,
nieces, nephews,
other family members,
a good many friends,
and one special friend;
I don’t know her,
but I remember
when my childhood friend
passed away suddenly,
his fiancé in shock, saying,
I don’t know what to do.
I didn’t know him,
but maybe we met before
without realizing it –
perhaps in passing at an airport
on opposite moving sidewalks,
both of us trying to get home.
14. Missoula
You flew all morning,
twenty-four hundred miles west
and two hours into the past
to spend a week and a day
auditioning a new place –
or is it auditioning you?
Sometimes you need a reboot.
I hope you find what you need,
but please know I’ll still be here
if neither of you land the part.
15. Inventory (For Tax Day)
A brochure of fears I cannot shred or burn,
a host of premonitions that have not come true,
photographs of strangers who look like me,
photographs of me that look like strangers,
a gathering of spectres waiting to be stirred
like dead leaves beneath a passing car,
a collection of words: liminal, interim, deferred,
canvases of silence marred by decibels of paint,
prayers like helium balloons tethered to strings,
broken ornaments of love, a calendar of regrets,
volumes of unwritten books and abandoned poems,
a trail of dead cells, a plague of gravity, etc etc.
And there is a long succession of moments
that led me to this time and place with you.
I have my love for you, and yours for me,
and that is the only thing I need to keep.
16. Balance
I am trying to tip the scale
in favor of what I want to do
instead of what I have to do,
but sometimes
I can’t tell the difference.
17. Koreanspice Viburnum
In the industrial park
their tiny huddled flowers,
their heady cloves and sweet vanilla
were almost profane
amid the noise and austerity
of maintaining the world.
Four days later
they are shrunken, faded,
their perfume is an errant thought,
and I want to believe
they clung together
so none of them would die alone.
18. Meanwhile The Earth
We are a brief marriage
of pulp and spark,
a long series of relapses
and repentance,
a note tied to a rock
and tossed at a window,
a package of promises
with a lone caveat.
Meanwhile the earth,
untroubled, keeps turning.
19. Sakura
You gathered your causes and effects
to chase another muse,
far from the concrete deer
with flecks of moss on its back,
the flurry of blush petals
settling below the cherry tree
or drifting into the wishing well
with the battered roof;
some things are foregone,
some things are just gone,
and others are hovering,
unsure whether it is safe to land.
20. Monday Morning
Last night
is in my hands;
I fold it carefully,
tuck it away,
but it doesn’t sleep –
it tries to unfold,
it murmurs
until dusk.
21. Distance To Empty
Matter and energy
cannot be created or destroyed.
Everything is a section
of sky, of track, of verse,
and I pretend I am a pilot,
an engineer, a poet.
Every song on the radio
plays one note at a time.
I watch the numbers turn over
and the needle drop –
so many matters of import,
so much energy spent
making grooves in the road,
changing to another state;
too much time going
and not enough being.
22. Noise
Silence is the default state
beneath our world’s frivolity.
We sacrifice our quiet joys
on altars of activity,
for work or war or grown-up toys.
This sacred thing we violate
with horn or bell or human voice
is not a canvas or a slate
to sully with cacophony.
Strategic sound will carry weight,
but absent its necessity,
it’s worthless, ear-polluting noise.
23. Sendoff
Often we say, it’s the end of an era
when it’s only routine change,
but when an era actually ends
we realize it much too late.
24. They All Want To Change The World
But I want to write about flowers I saw today,
how some leaned left and some leaned right
and others went straight up the middle,
how the red and the blue and the purple ones
were too busy enjoying brief seasons of bloom
to cultivate grievances or dig up old bones,
and I wish we were able to root for one another,
to find common ground, to look at ourselves
and, for once, think we are beautiful too.
25. Parlor
Once you were here,
breezing from room to room.
Now a chair is turned
toward the window
and the air holds only
the soft collapse of day
and the ordinary dark.
26. Wind Chimes
Before and after –
the same clapper and sail,
the same copper tubes,
the same beveled edges,
the same nodal points,
the same wind,
the same pentatonic scale –
a different song.
27. I wake..
and the day is already spoken for,
my name already penciled in.
The mirror looks me up and down,
then shrugs indifferently.
I carry myself like a borrowed object,
keys on my hip for someone else’s doors.
You are good at being here without me,
I am good at kissing you goodbye;
every night you are the sea
and I am a lighthouse in a desert,
my rotating beam finding only sand.
Good night, my love, until tomorrow.
28. My Right Hip
My gait
is a metronome
clicking out of time;
I tell the young men,
you’re not indestructible,
you know.
29. Constellation
You broke up with yourself,
then drew lines on a map
and followed them to another sky
where the stars are arranged
in a way that makes sense.
30. Flicker
A candle stutters,
articulating the room
in brief flashes
like the face
you once saw in a dream
slowly erasing itself.
(For L.K.)
Epilogue:
What is the difference
between the last day of one month
and the first day of another?
I’m aging all the same,
subject to ticks and checkmarks
and the turning over of cells.
Every day has its own name,
and its components too,
all of them anonymous agents
in the slow erosion of everything.
