Prologue:
Morning seeps into the halls
like stealthy waters born of light
and creeps its way up every wall
’til there’s no evidence of night.
These rooms unfold like letters found
in some forgotten trinket box;
my love, we’ll hold the summer’s sound
and tarry ’til the equinox.
1. Answers To Make Me Feel Better
Identity is continuity,
meaning is consequence and context,
and time is entropy and information.
2. Skipping The World
Every second,
minute,
hour,
day,
and week
and month
and year
and decade
has a record
and a name,
but you
need no record
and your name
is only known
to God.
3. Only So Much Time
I sing in a key that’s locked in my car.
I am lost and found out,
I am the sum of sleeping.
I am listening to bad hold music,
trapped between first and third parties,
subject to too many consequential opinions.
I am a name in someone’s datebook.
I have only so much time to be unavailable,
to wake in increments, to stargaze on purpose,
to traffic in things that aren’t on stat sheets,
to photograph decaying barns,
to happen upon silence and say,
hello old friend.
4. Reagan on the JFK, July 4, 1986
I miss optimism,
I miss humor,
I miss decorum,
I miss clarity,
I miss faith.
I miss 56 men
committing high treason.
I miss America.
5. Afterglow
The day was a friend
who lingered in the doorway
before the rose bush
that was burning but not consumed
and a backdrop of pastels
feathering into abstractions,
and later, a heavy-eyed lover
beside you in bed
trying to finish one more chapter.
6. After Eden
The weeds win by volume.
They wear down my hands, my knees.
But the garden looks exalted,
at least for today.
I lower myself into a chair,
cash out some of the pain
I banked over the years.
7. For Dan, Who Would Have Been 79
I want you to know
you have your own song —
it’s acoustic and sad
and mentions a bridge and a river.
I think you would have liked it
when you were alive.
There are also some poems
I wrote for your passing.
I doubt you would have liked them,
but who knows?
8. Catch The Rain
Catch the Rain
like an empty vessel that needs a purpose;
catch the rain,
knowing every cloud is a chalice
tilted by an invisible hand,
every raindrop was once a river,
a teardrop, a bead on a window;
catch the rain,
for droughts have piled up by the door
like old newspapers;
catch the rain,
drink the coming storm
like the trees with countless green tongues;
catch the rain
like a fortune falling through your hands,
and when it is gone, linger beneath the sky,
wealthy with something that cannot be kept.
9. 62
Age is just a number.
So is
PSA,
bone density,
blood pressure,
resting heart rate,
TSH,
retirement age,
the pain scale,
A1C,
death count,
triglyceride,
LDL,
kidney function,
oxygen level,
HDL,
waist size,
Vitamin D,
BMI,
co-pay amount,
sleep time per night,
yearly doctor visits,
etc.
So kindly shut up.
10. Epigraph
A vessel that once held the needs of the living —
perhaps water bottles or someone’s ashes,
is ready to burst like an old wineskin,
sending rainwater back into the earth.
11. Saturday
At the low side of normal,
the extreme of average,
and the tail end of balance
I step into the morning
the way I step into my jeans.
12. In Its Place
A houseplant leans toward a window,
my shirt tail folds around a lens,
a chair is turned sideways at the table
as if someone rose with purpose;
Earth is moving several ways at once —
nothing is really at rest in the universe.
Somewhere, a coin drops from a hand
into another hand, a drawer slams,
and two people made in the image of God
finish their transaction and part ways.
13. The Long Way Home
I take the long way home
because there is no short way
on evenings when a voice speaks
from fifty years in the past,
galaxies hover between power lines,
and the moon, tangled in oak branches,
tries in vain to free herself.
14. Generic
This is the first line of the poem,
and this is the second line.
The third line goes here,
and this line completes the stanza.
What were you expecting?
I have no childhood issues to solve,
no dysfunction to celebrate,
no grievances to give me status.
I won’t bore you with confessions
or insert identity buzzwords.
Politics can be found anywhere,
and I think we’ve had our fill.
Why consider a nature theme
when Mary Oliver did it better?
There is nothing new under the sun.
(Even that is a cliché.)
So begins the final stanza.
This line is a placeholder
so the penultimate line can appear.
The poem ends now.
15. Ask Me
Ask me about the rising and falling pitch of my voice. Ask me why I don’t answer. Ask me how I know change isn’t always good. Ask me why safe places keep me up at night. Ask me why all this ease frightens me. Ask me about the soft lighting and the firefly and the dot of wine at the bottom of my glass. Ask me why the horizon is still a mystery. Ask me what useless facts I’ve learned. Ask me what I should have buried long ago. Ask me if I believe we are stardust. Ask me about the songs I no longer like. Ask me about the important books I haven’t read. Ask me about the context of silence. Ask me what is common to everyone and everything I miss. Ask me if I believe in a singularity. Ask me if I should call off the search. Ask me something in a whisper, in a dark room. Ask me a question you know I can’t fully answer. Ask me what part of my body I can rely on, and what part I can’t. Ask me again tomorrow.
16. Instructions for Finding The Horizon
Begin at dusk where the trees stop
and the stars begin.
Drive until the radio station
becomes a polyglot of static and music,
then go back until there is clarity
and every voice is like water
trickling through sediment.
Fold the evening like a newspaper
and carry it under your arm until dawn.
Wake up in a strange place.
See the reflections in a lake,
and wonder which sky is real.
Go home.
17. The House After
Morning has a key and lets itself in,
the birds are only doing their jobs.
There are boots in the foyer
holding their peculiar shape.
At night the rooms are full of ghosts,
the mirror doubles the darkness,
and we speak in hushed tones
as if someone might be listening.
18. The Weight Of Light
Every morning I prop up the sky
with a cliché of umbrellas.
Maybe the blue of day is too heavy,
or the weeping clouds, or the dust.
At night I lean against the window
to watch a heavy downpour of stars.
Then I hear someone I love
laughing in another room;
gravity relents, I close the blind,
and walk toward the light.
19. Haiku
the bindweed’s deep roots –
my sinful nature
20. Visiting Hours
The sky falls in slow motion,
it breaks in sections;
your essence drops away
like hairs from your head.
Tonight the Moon
is halved by a shadow
and Venus mocks the stars.
They appear close together,
but I know they are far apart,
impossibly far apart.
21. Longevity
When infant stars are being formed
and old ones disappear,
we sense the pitch evolving
in the music of the spheres,
the engine of the world
is being turned by other hands,
and shifting wind or gravity
curtails our future plans,
I hope you’ll honor this request,
don’t disregard my plea:
Remember me, remember me,
young man, remember me.
22. Not A Haiku
Evening rain –
I collect pieces of the storm,
my shirt soaks up darkness,
my mind holds clouds,
thunder and lightning
strike my stomach and bones;
but the old cliché of tears
won’t give me the pleasure.
23. Sunflowers
I was ok today
until I saw them along the road,
beaming, as golden as ever,
refusing to stop being beautiful
on your account,
and I pulled over to cry.
24. Haiku Adjacent
summer rain —
I swore I would not write
a haiku
25. Taking One For The Team
Not the baseball team.
I don’t care much for baseball,
but I know you enjoy it
and I don’t want you to go
to the game alone.
26. The Last Thing
We spend our lives collecting titles like
child, friend, lover, parent, grandparent,
and some we set down like empty cups.
In just a few weeks we can open the windows
and watch the wind lift the curtains;
if there is anything that will survive us,
it is this.
27. Midsummer
By now the season has established itself
with rabbit holes and still trees
and spinach long past its yield,
but I’m still unable to perceive
the slow ebbing of daylight,
the missing forty-five seconds
and the subtle path of shadows
like a movie slowed almost to a stop.
Someone down the road is singing
as a honeybee hovers, deliberates,
then chooses just the right flower.
28. A Dream
I dreamed you were alive again,
just sitting there all nonchalant
talking about some trivial matter.
I knew something wasn’t right
when you didn’t mention the afterlife
or try to explain your presence,
though I have your ashes in a box
and your possessions in storage.
I had been measuring time by loss
but you had to come back anyway
as if you pulled off the ultimate prank,
dismissing all the work of grief.
The dream clock had no hands, no face,
and when I awoke, you were still gone.
29. After “Bird Of Sorrow”
You start off barely whispering
From somewhere you don’t want to be
Where love withholds its mystery
Where love withholds its mystery
But it will find you soon again, be ready then
Your music speaks to everything
In sorrow, like a wounded bird
I’m hanging on your every word
I’m hanging on your every word
Saying love will find you soon again, be ready then
And now the bird has taken wing
Too soon, we cry, as it begins
Crescendos carried by the wind
Crescendos carried by the wind
Saying love will find you soon again, be ready then
Love will find you soon again, be ready then
Love will find you soon again, be ready then
(For Glen Hansard)
30. There Are Things
There are things I am afraid to tell you,
as if ink or pixels would give them legs,
as if saying something would make it real.
The setting of my inner world is a cliff’s edge.
Maybe yours is too, and we could take turns
talking each other away from them.
31. By morning the stars
have left no evidence
but I still remember
the bad dreams.
Epilogue:
The wind stopped to ask me for directions.
“You’re the wind,” I said. “Any way is correct.”
The wind said, “then I will stay here awhile.”
“Thank you,” I replied, “I am very honored,
but there are tears to dry, boats to push,
flags to stretch, weathervanes to turn;
and somewhere, there is a little girl
holding up her pinwheel expectantly.”
At that it kissed my face and moved my hair,
and I looked up to notice a skein of geese
honking gleefully, gliding in V formation,
pointing south toward the edge of the world.
