the residents

Blackened circles spot the pads

where oil memories sank into the concrete -

you roll over them as you pull up to the pump -

you see the cashier behind the plexiglass

scanning bottles of soda and packs of cigarettes

and scratch tickets -

the regulars he knows -

the ones not known to others -

it is a community of the night -

the nurses on swing shift

the musicians coming home from a gig -

the bar tenders, beer sopped

and the junkie homeless who know

they won't get run off from the bathrooms

when it's three AM and the respectable people are asleep.

The clubbers, too, who think they are doing something new

and can only imagine being this way

young and beautiful.

Even so, he scans their ice cream

because who has never had ice cream

when the moon is tired and the sun has hit the snooze button

one more time.

Isn't that ah-mazing?!

But the other residents know them for what they are -

tourists passing through.

The cashier is an unwilling priest -

a keeper of the fluorescent flame -

warding off the darkness.

Which are you? Resident or tourist?

It doesn't matter as you leave your car by the pump

and walk through the door with the markers for height -

the priest will see you now,

and provide you sustenance for the darkest hours.

unleashed

 

The white chops of my dog's legs flash 

as she trots ahead of me -

she revels in her freedom

despite the signs instructing those of us who walk the trails

to keep our dogs leashed.

She darts to one patch of leaves

then to a stand of grass

all beneath the shade of oaks 

and maples

and hemlocks -

her snout to the ground

and snuff-snuff

before she is off again

experiencing a layer of reality I am cut off from -

a fourth dimension I have no senses to perceive.

But, 

her joy becomes my joy as I watch 

and I am unleashed

and find I can smell the disturbed mulch

and I can hear the rustle of the wind

and I feel the hand of the sun on my cheek

as I pass between the solidity of the trunks.

when it was not

I am drinking coffee looking out the window 

at the oaks and maples
as I have done thousands of times. 

This is morning in my house. 

But I was not the first to drink coffee here -

there was a different table and different chairs

when I walked through with my agent

and the Parkers were still making their home here.

I could look at records at Town Hall to see 

who was their before them, 

the chain of property rights extending back

to when this spot was only oaks and poplars

and no table to sit at, or window to look through. 

But there are no records of the future for me to look up 

to whom I sold it to

in some year 

hopefully long from now -

or perhaps my children are listed as the sellers. 

The buyers names are not yet written in history.

Perhaps they are getting dropped off at elementary school this morning,

she is wearing a yellow jacket, the color of fall maple leaves;

he has collected acorns to show his teacher. 

They do not even know each other yet.

They are coming down Time's road to this house,

and they will sit here with their morning coffee someday,

looking out this window

at the spindly oak I am looking at now -

the one that has just stuck its head up past the rhododendrons -

which by then will have grown into its oakish majesty. 

They will know it was not always so,

but they will not remember when it was not. 

Man-Talk

"love you" he said

over wires stretched under the Atlantic

[on 10 cent Sunday to Germany

and most of Western Europe]

 

the slip --

he was somewhere absently offering farewell to

his wife/dad/son --

 

nonetheless stuffed the pause

with awkwardness.

 

"I know" I sent - smirk almost visible

to relieve the moment.

then quick --

"I'll have Kan call Tammy next week"

"yeah - later"

 

still savoring my best-friend's embarrassment

(wondering if he would tell his wife)

(I just told Mark I loved him)

(what, is he dying?)

I was warmed

that I had fit, even if by accident

into that inmost list --

the feeling reciprocated

if never said

and covered by mirth.

**

I don't remember when I wrote this poem exactly - probably 2004 or so. It was based on a real moment. 

how it begins, again

I was not expecting to see you here

my old friend.
I thought perhaps the dog from my childhood,
and my parents, of course,
but you have been gone so long - 
it's not that I stopped thinking of you -
but you had faded some with time and distance -
which are really the same thing.

You are wearing your red shirt - 
it's the one I remember you in 
when I thought of you
after.

I see - this is why you wear it - 
and that's a kindness. 

We are walking in the woods 
here, after the end of the world - 
hands in our pockets -  
as we once did. 
It's fall
and the oaks are turning red 
like your shirt. 

It's good you are here - 
and this 
is how it begins again.

Us who are lucky

How many miles I would have walked
had I known
this was coming -

how many paths with grass
dripping morning dew
on my socks with each step,
the sun just over the tree line - 

or a rock strewn trail winding up
through cramped pines 
to catch a glimpse, at the summit
of other peaks gathered 'round like neighbors -

how, you ask, did I not know
age was coming -
it comes for all of us
who are lucky.

I am only a fool

 

The days I feel I am a fool, it is as if

I am dressed in a billowy canary jumper

dotted with a rouge of polka dots

and a foam ball on my nose.

With floppy ketchup shoes and French fry laces

I waddle about

trying to say serious things that come out like

"Life is short, call your mother!"

"You are what you do, not what you say you'll do!"

and the eyes settle on me

unwavering

for a moment

and then they laugh.

I am earnest in all things

on these days

but when the big daisy on my lapel

squirts them in the eye,

I'm just not taken seriously -

but this is me.

Just me. 

Gluttony

Mac sauce in the corner of your mouth,

crumbs in your moustache,
hours of porn on your phone - 
eating and fornicating 
like a bloated rat on a satin pillow - 
you want to swallow up all that is beautiful -
and even all that is not.

With each bite the gullet grows -
the sin is in the ratio -
nothing created, only consumed.

banishment

From the Seven, Envy is my sin
I would banish first -

They are always behind all the others - 

always wanting, seething, moaning -

I would catch them by the ear

and drag them with boots scuffing

to the high city wall of my soul

and hurl them from the parapet

as they wailed about

inequity and injustice.

the path between worlds

Will you follow me on this path

between worlds?

I gesture to where the grass has been worn down

by the feet of generations.

You say, it's just the trail behind the school - 

it comes out by the plaza with the pizza shop 

and the liquor store where the kids try to shoplift booze

if they can't con someone into buying it for them -

Not now, I say, not at this moment, I say,

as the sun retreats leaving the last gentle gold

of a summer day drifting along the horizon

You take my hand and we step past the crushed soda bottle

as if it were a guardian

and we pass into the darkening wood -

you look back for a moment and feel  

the trees close behind us -

we walk and become aware - 

the sound of tires and doors and shouts faded away

while we were not listening -

you draw a bit closer

and I say, it's going to be ok

even as the branches come close

It's too dark - I can't see you, you say -

it's cold.

and now we stand still and I close my eyes,

breathing in mud from the last storm,

mulched leaves, and the fresh growth -

This is what was needed - 

it's not dark, I say -

see now the faerie lights - look through my eyes -

and you see it too - 

dim, but enough that we step toward a clearing -

it's not cold - feel with my hands the radiating fire

and I hold out my hands to the center of things

and you do as well -

now you are telling me about the magic - 

all around us the holly draped and woven with the ivy -

we see it together, hands likewise held.

The Cat is Awake

The cat is awake and

unlike the sun-worshipping rooster 

who begins his ululation 

without thought of you,

the cat begins to howl with intention. 

It is an hour before your alarm clock is set to go off. 

There was dream-work to be done

whatever strange twists on reality

your subconscious was working through

taking out the trash of the previous day

rearranging what was left, Tetris-like,

to save space for tomorrow so that

you don't find yourself forgetting mid-sentence

who you have been talking to - 

all of this is interrupted

leaving piles of irrelevant details 

like bits of film strip

scattered around the editing room of your brain.

The cat does not care about any of this - 

that his howling each morning

steals a day from your life outside of the nursing home.

The cat is awake and

he wishes that you would be too. 

And so you are.

Office of Days

The shifting office is half constructed 

and half demolished when we arrive today.
The carpet is gritty 
and the fluorescent lights in the drop ceiling are aseptic. 
Yet here we are again - 
and the choices pile up like bricks.

Hello, hello - 
that's another wall over there -
or is it a doorway? 
Hard to say
until it's all done, which it never is -
but we all leave sooner or later. 

Steve is such a jerk. 
How is your family? 
I brought in some donuts! 
That witch in finance...

At the margins where we all reside
we add one brick at a time - 
or maybe today that's a window frame going in.

Collective Action

The cast iron door of the wood stove swings open 
and I can feel the weight despite the gentle ease -
I can also feel the heat on my face and hands,
and smoke wafts up and out.

The split wedge of oak that I feed in on top of the orange coals
is seasoned grey with three years of drying in the stacks out back.
It will burn well and hot. 
I close the door to the stove and lock the handle
like a banker at the end of the day. 

Winter is upon us.

Where the grass shows between the snow, 
faded and brown, the ground is frozen to rock. 
Where the blades bent cool beneath our bare feet,
there is no forgiveness now. 

Up the chimney and into the night air we send the smoke of our fire. 
There are other chimneys doing the same - 
and there are yellow lights in the windows.
I imagine a couple walking outside with boots and jackets and wool mittens
on the dark street.
They are a little less alone, a little less cold, with the smell of woodsmoke
hanging in the air. 
We are all a little less alone, a little less cold. 

Youth

 I think of the wasted motion of my youth -
grand statements of purpose,
aspirations without understanding the cost.

A life that is a car with two new, but wrong-sized tires -
a map in hand, but of the wrong city -
trying to follow it because 

its a map -
wobbling and bobbing around corners.
Still faster than the older models around me,
but why do they seem to get there first?

Too many mismatched pieces - 
like going to work with a wingtip 
and an Air Jordan -
going to the gym and changing, 
only to put the same but opposite -
not knowing why everything is so difficult.

They say you can't fix stupid, 
but I wasn't stupid -
just young.