Sloughing

At this point, I seriously doubt that
I will ever be one of those people
that considers dusting the furniture
occasionally to be of much consequence.
Not that I wouldn't like to be, but at my age,
I don't see it happening.

Remembering to get Christmas cards
mailed on time, or just written, even, should
also probably come off the list of habits
I might spontaneously cultivate.

Actually, I'd say most recognizable forms
of dependability are right out as well.
Unless you are depending on me to not finish
a thoughtful, well-intentioned project,
or to not be able or willing to buy what you're selling.
Put your money down on those, friend.

Sit-ups in the morning, voice lessons,
or ever being the kind of man that
prefers hot tea to boiling black coffee:
I finally confess the obvious truth --
I've never wanted any of you badly enough.
Goodbye.

There are a few other things I'd like to
officially cast off in the crooked wake
of my life, already littered with what
I might have been or done and little
busted bits and chips of this body and soul.
They include:

a deep love of raw vegetables, especially carrots;
being a reasonable man;
juggling;
cherishing brevity above all else;
being who she calls in a crisis;
choosing tasteful, coordinated clothing;
always knowing the score;
flossing;
fixing it.

The Hour Upon Us

We must write today,
because that is exactly how long we have it,
if there is to be any hope of a marriage
between what is honest and alive.
There may well be much time for poems born
of memory and an earnest desire to say what was,
but we can't, any of us, be relied on to see
it right, and say it true tomorrow.
Those are the misty, fairy poems.
The hobgoblin children that get made when
wistfulness and our romantic, refractive hearts
have too much wine together after the fire
of the moment and the light from the day
have gone out, burned down to dust.
Pride often lays hands on those works too,
and we cast ourselves better, others worse,
than we ever were -- we make tiny fortresses
of small stone stanzas -- castles in far off
kingdoms where we are kissed or tortured to death,
if not both.
And I love those poems, that enchanted brood,
yes.

But there are troubles enough to truly see
the bonzai gnarled before me now,
to hold the sunrise beyond it that
lights my early perch in this chair,
to believe that God stirs around them both
and within me.
Troubles enough yes, and the shadowed
history of the world that has brought
us both here to this page doesn't need to be
weighed long to see that infinite
else could, perhaps even should, have happened.

But I am here, with the resolute bonsai blazing
in our squandered commodity of light.
And the day is begun, and will not be held back,
and things will be decided and done today,
and God, for whom nothing is wasted, is here too,
yes.

And so I make this today, or never, and it will
be here, for us to remember, at our leisure,
or in hours of great need:

There is light.
The tree stands.
Its leaves are very small.
Trunk, thick as a child's thumb.
Roots so fine and strong they testify to truths
irrefutable:
there is a God with hands.

A Love Poem In A Minor (Hopeful) Key

I knew something had shifted when I again
noticed the glory of the sun rising late last week.
I know, by now, this is the ordinary sort of brilliance
that continues to bloom, without resentment,
through the forgettable, unengaged stretches of days,
years. Those we cannot name, mark or retrieve now.

Some beauty does not die.
Some keeps on.

It was early this week that I found myself singing,
with passion, in a hard rain storm some
songs I've never particularly liked,
melodies I didn't even know I knew the words to --
that it became clear there was a serious problem.

Plant a sprig of mint and turn your back
on it for fifteen minutes,
and it takes over what you call your garden.

It's the same with love or lust.

It was just the smallest thought that I brought home.
Something with your face or scent pressed into it.
A spindly cutting with no roots of its own
that fell in some of my good soil.

And I slept one night, two nights, three, maybe --
and between the dew and sudden showers of
song my life and soul have been watered,
and the brilliant, forgotten sun has risen again
on a glorious, green Spring bed of love unexpected.

Rededication

At lunch today I went for a burrito
and scored a table on the patio
and made my order and waited
for the hottest salsa in town.

A tremendous Spring day,
the skyscape wide with potentiality.

There was a couple on an early date,
feeling each other out with nervous smiles.
And two friends planning a camping
trip as the waiter brought more pints
and me with a rumbly belly, eyes open.

There were several loose pieces of paper
strewn on the ground where some of us
fed the boldest birds bits of chips.

It was poetry.

I mean literally.

Pages of carefully crafted, printed poetry.

Lost leaves of some manuscript,
there about our ankles.

I scooped up pages three and four,
pages ten and eleven, page seventeen too.

Deadly stuff.

I mean horrible.

Stabs at something and the usual net:
an awkward outing of loneliness,
some shrewd commentary on the trees,
lots of talk about grassy fields,
and apparently there was a broken heart.

There was one brilliant page among the
half poems. The bravest, clearest moment
he managed to compile before all the
numbered sheets, reading only:

"For Pamela"

It felt like quite a thing to hold, and I wonder
if he'd ever held her, or if she'd ever held this.
If these pieces came loose in a windstorm
as he rushed to bind them back at the apartment,
or if she had turned them loose from her front porch
after he left the last time, he loved her, he loved her not.
She finally let these petals fly as she wept,
Pamela's stringy red hair still wet from their
last long walk in the rainy woods.

Pam, sweet, homely Pamela --
I've found him, I'm holding his heart in my hands.
Samuel isn't dead, he never left for Arizona.
He misses you, though he could never say that.
Sam loves you, though you could never hear that.
His bottle washed up on my shoreline at lunch today.

He made this for you.

Nervous Spring

The chartreuse leaves, a week old on the neighbor's oak,
look fragile and exposed against the roiling slate of
late afternoon snow clouds bearing down.

Our world is turning cold for another night before the
heat and the summer, drunk on warm rain and longer days.

A fat rabbit by the split rail fence nibbles and hops,
twitches and chews,
knowing there is a family of foxes in the barn across the yard.

The barn is my shut-in neighbor's too --
everything in this scene is hers, if it is anyone's --
her son has mended the broken roof, though it's still
trying to cave and gape -- he's done the best he could.
It stands now, knowing time will have it's way and
there's no fixing here that will help.

It's all right though.

The oak will hold her baby leaves
despite the snow.

The rabbit comes from a large family --
the foxes can't eat them all.

The son patched the roof for love of his passing mother,
and there's nothing in there they need.

Diamond Dust

The snow gathered itself in the drowsy pines
and bare knuckled oaks all night, apparently.
I was asleep.
It settled in our local woods under a new moon
midnight like news about to come knocking:
cancer, in the throat.
Or like an epiphany about to break the surface
of your sea:
God has a sense of humor, too.

If you would join me at the window now,
we see the morning, very clear skies, blue and
new and alive because there is a lot of wind today
and all that snow that fell fluffy and mysterious
from heaven broke when it landed – every flake
shattered into its icy atomic pieces blowing now
in this diamond dust storm – can you see the
refractions, dazzling and uncountable? It’s just
a Thursday, it’s just light and water that froze and fell
and is raised up on the gusty breath of our February
now, but it is beautiful, worth a moment’s watching
and remembering here together at the frosty window,
our cancers gnawing, our God smiling.

Lexiconic Laceration

She was pretty enough, beautiful even,
at the table next to me in the coffee house
where the music thumps and we sip our
expensive, fairly grown bean brews
and pretend not to notice one another.

She leaned to me in a moment that halved
the haze of the place with her tongue, asked:

"How do you spell commit?"

You know, of course, she was sitting alone.

"One 't' or two?" she demanded of me.

Of all people.

"I hate that word," she said.

"I believe you," I said.