Prologue:
You may
begin,
enter, fire when ready, kiss the bride,
leave footprints, say I’m a dreamer,
think I’m crazy, be wondering,
leave fingerprints, continue,
look now, leave evidence,
eat from any tree in the garden except ..
begin again.
1. Origami
The A train leaves with a face in every window,
each one with a story, a question, a task.
On the platform between east and west,
a woman folds a schedule into a swan
with arrivals and departures on its wings
and the world gets a last minute reprieve.
2. Last Days
A propaganda tour,
a bed memorizing a body;
a bombshell, a bomb blast,
a closed road, an open book;
one small loss, one workaround,
then another, then another –
and who, at the beginning,
considers the ending?
3. What Is This You Have Done?
I don’t blame Eve for being duped –
someone had to be first;
or Adam for selling her out,
since he was busted by Almighty God.
If not them, some other couple
would have ruined the world,
and ultimately, I’d still be here
kneeling on the cursed ground
trying to plant unforbidden fruit,
muttering about the fescue roots.
4. Why I’m Not Famous
I spent a good portion of the morning
working on a poem I don’t believe in,
then I remembered I have no clean shirts.
5. In Your Hands
You can see the world from here,
but everything is bell jar clear;
you can buy the hype and rage
and feel so free within your cage;
you can live with fits and starts –
canned laughter, sadness, shock, and hearts;
you can gather friends like bones
and still be utterly alone.
It’s time to put away your phone.
6. Every Day Is A Side Project
The title is the body,
the body is the vehicle
taking my soul away
from real life.
7. The Wave
The wave comes unexpectedly –
you are at the market looking at bottled water,
in the backyard throwing a ball for the dog,
at work trying to shake off something
that won’t let go;
you wipe the salt from your face
with the back of your wrist
and realize you can’t name any particular storm.
8. Out
I pressed my secrets
like bulbs into the earth
and soon my backyard
was full of red tulips,
little mouths
opening all at once.
9. Saturday Things
a. Regatta
While standing in front of a decaying lighthouse
amid cowbells and screams of encouragement,
I looked across the lake and saw two boys
standing on the bank pitching stones,
and I wondered what boys talk about these days
because, honestly, I cannot remember.
b. Roses
What does it mean?
Fake flowers cost more
than real ones,
they require little effort,
need no care at all,
no emotional investment,
while the real ones
remind me of my mortality
and sinful nature,
yet I would rather
water them with tears
as I suck a dot of blood
from my fingertip.
10. Mother’s Day
The last time I saw her
she was standing
in front of her house
next to my Dad
before grief and dementia
left him bedridden.
It was Christmas day,
and they’d been at my house
when she began to feel sick.
I dropped her and Dad off.
She waved, and I waved back
as I drove away, thinking
she just needed rest.
The last time we spoke
was her last day on earth.
I called her at the hospital
the night before
she was to go home.
11. Seasons
I once thought seasons were instant,
as if some invisible pair of hands
changed the thermostat setting
or curated new colors while we slept,
but I have learned to notice
the gradual tilt of hemispheres,
the managed decline of empires,
the constant turnover of cells,
the editing of names in a room.
And yet seasons have piled up
behind me, almost instantly.
12. Yard Check
Still, this morning,
a cloud’s shadow moves past me,
light comes down
as if a door has opened overhead.
13. Run
I don’t run anymore;
well, not in the literal sense.
But the mint and zucchini,
the broken pickup,
the hands and the voices
couldn’t care less
about my arthritic hip
or diminished stamina.
They need water and weeding,
tensioners and attention,
and those are non-negotiable.
So I run, figuratively.
Then, if time permits,
I steal away to breathe,
to study, to write,
to plan a way to be late
to whatever is next.
14. Visitation Day
Dear Rain,
please come
and let me weep in secret.
Dear Clouds,
please keep the sun off my face
for a little while.
Dear Sky,
please let me be the only blue thing,
just for today.
15. Rainy Day Thoughts On A Sunny Day
The day announced itself,
then dropped into a groove
like a needle on an old record.
I expected music, perhaps dancing,
but the sun seemed to whisper
The soul is like light;
it has no mass, no weight,
but the heart
can be impossibly heavy.
16. Choose (Part 1)
It wouldn’t be easy if I had to choose
between giving up coffee or swearing off booze,
because one helps me wake up, the other to snooze,
and I wouldn’t know which to neglect or abuse.
17. Conspirators
Gravity
who knocks the wineglass
from my hand;
Time
whose resolve stiffens
as losses mount;
Creativity
paid for with
exquisite loneliness;
My body,
the deep time
of its geology.
18. Monday Morning
It is Monday morning
and I am already tired
from a week yet to unfold;
I rush headlong into every burden
solely to be free of it.
19. Grocery Shopping At The End Of The World
As I consider flavors of seltzer
a bomb is in midair over a foreign land,
and while I squeeze an avocado
an errant bullet is halfway to its victim.
I scroll through coupons for coffee
that doesn’t taste like cremation ashes
and someone listens for voices in the rubble
or keeps a weeping vigil by a child’s bedside.
Although I am grateful to concern myself
with the mundane tasks of the living,
I fear one day I will be accosted in aisle 5
by a dapper little man in a tailored suit
who will look at the items in my cart
and say, you won’t be needing those.
20. For A Day Of Leaving
The stripes and stars,
the playing cards
on chain link fences pinned,
the moving leaves,
the whistling eaves
are hinting at the wind.
The daisy chain,
the weather vane
(how lazily it spins),
the lady fern,
the hovering tern,
the curtains blowing in,
the broken gate,
the rolling crate,
a storm as it begins,
the letter box,
your auburn locks
are hinting at the wind.
21. Why I Am Not Prolific
The writing doesn’t come easy –
I need to warm up
like an old diesel tractor
on a cold morning,
and when I have done so
the day barges in
with its demands.
22. Forty Seven Seconds
Forty seven seconds into a minute,
I’ve got a limited number of beats,
no time for unnecessary prepositions,
no desire to throw in with either side.
But there is a small window for us
to get high on the playground,
to entertain beauty, recognize angels,
or name all the common miracles
in this strange alchemy of spirit and bone
before our minute on Earth is up.
23. By late afternoon
the storm presses its face against the window
and the courtyard dissolves into abstractions.
24. Providence
Safe landings and scrubbed launches,
bridges that survived fire, closed doors,
a muse showing up with emergency verses,
a Saint Bernard with a little barrel of brandy
around his neck,
that moment when dozens of samaras
launch from the ashes all at once
like missionaries from a thriving church
and I am privy to the elegant engineering
of the world.
25. For Memorial Day
Red
White
Blue
Love
Innocence
Truth
Courage
Purity
Patriotism
Passion
Peace
Wisdom
Honor
Clarity
Loyalty
Valor
Transcendence
Justice
Blood
Absence
Grief
Red
White
Blue
26. Entertain The Light (A Song)
Don’t need a tower from which to fall
Don’t need a hill on which to die
No urgent early morning call
I’m out of tears to cry
Don’t need a line to walk across
Don’t need a cloud to stand beneath
Don’t need to tally profit/loss
I’ve had enough of grief
Don’t need a heart to break in two
Don’t need a castle I can keep
Don’t need another shade of blue
I’ve got no time to weep
Today I will invite the sun
To stop here on its chosen run
‘Cuz I’m not buying all this night
I’ll entertain the light
I’ll entertain the light
27. Choose (Part 2)
It wouldn’t be easy if I had to choose
between utter contentment or bouts of the blues,
because one lets me function, one summons my muse,
and I wouldn’t know which one to keep or refuse.
28. Writer’s Block
I’m stagnant and I’m red-lined
and there’s nothing new to say,
and yet I’ve got a deadline anyway –
it’s self-imposed but I can’t let it go,
it’s like a curse.
So when I’ve got a wealth of prose,
perhaps a verse, I’ll let you know.
It’s gotten worse.
29. Choose (Part 3)
It wouldn’t be easy to take all my cues
from the people promoting their falses and trues,
and their yesses and nos, and their don’ts and their dos,
and their whats and their wheres and their whens and their whos.
30. Ars Poetica
It forms within a hemisphere
and flows within a ventricle
til canticles and madrigals
and miracles appear.
31. Staples
All my thoughts
held together
by tiny wires.
Epilogue:
You may not
enter,
park here after 6 am,
be a movie star, smoke here,
change the terms of service,
reproduce without permission,
remember, bring pets,
bring outside food or drink,
access restricted areas,
leave,
eat from the tree of knowledge ..
