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.

Sunrise

Body stretches up

The sun is caught between arms -

Sunrise of the mind. 

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.