99/365: the getting ready

before anyone else is awake
I sit with my coffee and
blank notebook page
and listen for a poem.

what I hear is the hum of the refrigerator
and the occasional pop
from inside the walls of the house.

no poems,
but the birds are making plans
for the day.

in minutes these are drowned out
by the movement of feet,
showers, and the getting ready.

98/365: while the coffee maker churns

dancin' in the kitchen
while the coffee maker churns
              and burbles
no idea why I'm happy
enough that I have to move
other than I'm alive
and it's a new day.

97/365: a man alone

A man alone
walks deep in the night
on a city street.

No one sees him -
this is not of consequence.

It is in the nature of men
to be alone

walking deep in the night.

96/365: a visit

Sitting at my desk
I suddenly started singing
a wordless melody -
a dirge like song,
with a oddly hopeful up tone

It seemed for a few bars
that I was intoning
notes I had known my whole life,
yet these were not my notes
but the notes of my grandmother
in house-Polish,
the Polish only spoken in western Massachusetts
among the older folk
before they laid down.

My wife asked what I was singing
and like that,
the notes were gone.