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My People

My people

married their first cousins

and passed on crooked backs

and congenital deafness -

my people scraped desert island hills

into terraces

and pleaded with the earth -

my people gathered the rain

in cisterns hidden beneath their huts.

There was never enough,

and poverty only begets beauty 

and generosity 

in the movies.

It's only true children are fear

and jealousy.

And that is why my people 

set sail

and did not 

return.

The First Day of Spring

The light and dark are equals

for this one day -

passing each other as they always do

in the halls of the sky at shift change.

What will Night do with his extra time

as Day takes on

her longer and longer shifts?

Does he have a hobby?

Like stamp collecting

or wood working?

And what has Day been occupying herself with

in her extra, off-duty hours

these last six months?

Has she been following the recommendations

of Oprah's book club?

Or watching all the Oscar nominees

while her colleague

watched the shop?

You have to feel a bit of sympathy for them -

they never get a vacation,

never take a week on some Caribbean Island

where the rum comes trimmed

with umbrellas and pineapple slices

or in a mountain lodge

curled up by the fire

with a blanket and cocoa.

Wisdom

An elder listens to you
without interjecting - 
they're not waiting their turn to speak -
and you
mistake their quiet
for having nothing to say.

Friend from Childhood's Last Days

Would I recognize you
all these years later
friend from childhood's last days?
From bottomless time playing Atari
and banana seat bicycles 
riding over cracked sidewalks
late into summer nights?

How have you aged, with a
dad-bod belly and a receding hairline?
or are you just divorce-worn,
living alone
except every other weekend?

What have you become, 
what with your skills at Space Invaders
and your facility with the Rubic's Cube?

If you saw me,
would you know me?
Would we pull out two Huffy's 
from behind the shed of memory
and pedal off together once more
by the blue glow glory of the street lamps?

**

Audio: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/honest-chaos/episodes/Friend-from-Childhoods-Last-Days-e23sg06 

at the edge of morning

It is the edge of morning and 

it is snowing and 

I am looking

through the glass pane of the bedroom window

into the woods -

the trees are looming black sleepers

at the edge of the yard,

my breath fogs my view for a moment 

as I lean too close -

and as it clears 

I see movement 

and a fox emerges, looks about -

and looks past me in my window,

utterly irrelevant.

I am struck 

by his burnt orange presence

as he carefully crosses the open space into the gardens

aware of scents and sounds

I would be blind to, even if I were standing next to him.

I wonder if he is really animal 

or spirit

in this half light 

crossing between worlds.

Leonardo's First Flight

The grind of flying is like wearing shoes with

frayed laces in a crowd -
everything is about to fall apart and you

are about to be trampled by indifferent strangers.

Flying happens in a crowd and no one is present -

you are an obstacle to their destination -

and so trampling is done with indifference.

I think of Leonardo in an unheated studio

sketching by candlelight

on a sheet of paper that cost more

than a peasant's dinner -

he draws first in the free space of the mind

before dipping the quill he sharpened this morning

in the bowl of squid ink he bought from a trader

from Pisa last Tuesday.

He has the idea of flying machines in his eye

before he begins scratching out

a bicycle that has wings that beat

with each rotation of the pedals -

or a corkscrew sail

that turns the wind like a water mill.

What joy would be express

even on the taxi from the gate

his seatbelt secured over his robes

and his satchel of parmigiana and prosciutto

stored beneath the  seat in front of him.

He would have his face pressed to the window

as the ground moved faster than any horse

he could have drawn -

flanks sweating and feet pounding -

then the wheels would lift

and the ground would fall away -

He would be speechless

as he saw the world as the birds he drew

and dissected -

and as he passed into the belly of a cloud

he would believe he could feel

the presence of God, so long doubted,

wrapping around him.

He would look to his passengers for fellow feeling -

to see who was likewise transfixed and transformed

by the certain presence of angels

only to find them

flipping through inflight magazines

or downing tiny bottles of whisky

or watching videos on their phones.