Any Other Way

Should we sit on far sides of the river
to remember that we are in love,
or think that one of us is fallen, and buoyed
at last amid a thousand petals
in the customary way?

Should I want you to be surrounded
by hungry and lawless things
or lost in the endless repetition
of a black wood,
that I might fight my way to you?

Would the random growth of cells
or mouse-trap chromosomes that
stiffen memory and my marrow
somehow stitch our hearts?

My love, don't be afraid.
I am yours more for our convention,
for desire's wildly ambitious and weary march,
for the urchins of habit
and the fog of familiarity.

For you, I light a sentinel beacon
many fathoms across the blue.
This is the way of a poet
who gives his heart to you. 

Long Distance

You are from here and I am from there,
we drive again from your state to mine.
We've been together four years
and we have worn out eight tires.

You moved down here and we'll move back there,
we give up our places to find each other.
The sweet rain outside falls like tears,
the engine internally combusts my heart.

Though weary, we'll miss it, somewhere down the road
when together forever we sit in the house,
the only traveling there a pitter-patter
of the four little feet of one local mouse.

Breakfast

I am much more inclined
to meditate on attachment
in the last few bites
of an English muffin
than at the beginning.

Hunger is like that,
hard to let go of
when it is whole.

Clouds

Horsetail clouds comb the blue bowl above
and I half-remember some insight about them.
Something about change
and their dear and wide view.

But they have no eyes, or if they do,
no mind to map the rivers and towns below.
As I age, my memories dry and fade.
I am drawn across the air a while,
sweeter for the less I know.

The Office

The cold circle of the moon
cuts me out of bed like a cookie,
bakes me under the hot stars,
sets me out to cool in the dark,
dots me with my own wan eyes
before setting over the horizon.

Tomorrow, I want the sun to ask
if there are any more of those.

Captain

I want to be the kind of father
who died crab fishing in the Aleutians
in a perfect storm.
Afterwards, he was known for the following:
1) Saving a deckhand at the last moment
2) His view of the world which was that
we can make our own way no matter what,
and that we can speak our peace with God.

My son's mood on the plane home today
makes the deck slippery again.

Present

Paper put beside the presents crinkles
as I wait for my gift to be opened,
and I wonder if he will like it and if
my expression will be alright, easy, light,
appreciative and not arrogant.

I open a gift not too carefully, not too quickly,
taking care to appear interested and excited.
But I am excited, this is Christmas,
where I learned of the simple joy of gifts,
and waiting breathlessly for dawn at age six.

I think I over-analyze these days.
I am like a wrapped gift
with no one to enjoy the exchange. 

Chess

Last night was the big party, tonight is close family,
my sons, my sister and her boys, and my wife.
My sister's husband is leading the church service.
We are having fun here, matching definitions,
challenging, guessing, and making canny jokes.
We should be in church, perhaps,
waiting for the birth of Jesus,
singing the praises of God's gift,
drinking in the silent night.

But the wise men, I heard, on this night,
played a round of chess,
because mortals need friendship
and a sense
that there may always be a way to win.

Grace

Grace kisses her ladybug
with showmanship and delight.
Then she tosses it to the floor,
as if to say This is but a ragged thing.

I ask to hold it and Grace
gives me a cocked eye and holds it out
and takes it back at the last moment.
Then she gives it to whom asked not for it.

I look at Grace and I love her
because she is beautiful and fickle.
And I notice
just how close she still is
to her maker. 

Tubing

We link arms with nephews, cousins and their others,
flying down the rare Minnesota hill
like we are skydiving.
We are made to be together
in gravity's fierce friction
softened by the snow and hands.

Solstice

The wheel is round, and thus
within itself has no ending.
Here on the ground,
we feel the rushing by of seasons.
The light it seems, has no color
but for the way it is bending.
I circumambulate the stone with you,
for what is brought forth without reason.

Change

If the world ends tomorrow
will it separate me from the things I love?
Will flowers bloom on another world
from a seed or molecule traveling light years?

Sometimes I am glad I do not have tomorrow,
so that I can know what it is to hold you.

Being Here

Now looks like a light headache,
tinnitus in spreading silence.
sometimes I dodge Now,
and don't entirely know why.
Now is the narrative of me
in the thought of every sound.
Now is the angel in the rose,
the release of knowing,
the remembering
and it is tears.

I am ever your servant,
though I forget the
colors of your raiment,
and your gentle and ever-present eye.

Nonsense Poem

Llamas, vicunas, alpacas and guanacos,
cats and dogs, canaries and goldfish,
cashews, salt, tortillas and avocados,
love and death and a dream and a wish.

What is the weight that a llama will throw off,
which is the pet that is sweetest to own?
Bake me into the bread that I'm dough of,
how long can I last as the bubble you've blown?

Setting

I let go my moorings tonight,
untethered myself to what may come,
green springs on quiet islands
or storms that tear the sails away
like witches at sacrifice.
I lifted the anchor of this port,
the streets of homes with golden windows,
and sweet smoke rising heavenward.
I unbound the line of regret
from the bollard of the past,
all of this in the middle of a thick fog,
which I hadn't seen until I began to let go.
To my surprise, I was more set and stable,
sure and true as the dog star in a sextant,
and filled to brimming with the thirst for salt.

Angels

I'm worried I'll look silly
crying before angels,
that kind of expression
where the heart
squeezes the love out of bitterness,
glory through the crust
about this unclaimed flesh,
ruptures bright red blood
onto the mantle of time.

But I no longer care how I look
when I am around angels, 
one of the gifts of aging
that takes me back to childhood,
where the sun flickered from above
as if through wings and I looked around
and no one was there at all
to speak one word of certainty. 

Abstract Impressionism

Somewhere in the garage of my mind,
I imagine a reckoning at death,
of the good and reckless choices
we have made, maybe Jackson Pollock

was in Heaven's green room thinking
he shouldn't have done so much drinking,
but then God is no random regent
of forgiveness and of fear.
Like Pollock,
he usually has an idea
of how he wants the image to appear.

Massacre in Newtown, Connecticut

They were scared for a moment, I'm sure.
That's the part I can feel the most,
because in me still is a little child,
standing in awe at the good the world brings,
another yellow sunrise, sweet crayons,
a blue globe, pencil boxes, books
about the love mother whales have for their babies
on their journey from Mexico to Alaska and back,
the voice of the teacher, warm as mother
but leading me outside to find my true place.

If I could, I would lead the ghosts of twenty children
out of their graves to play.
As it is, I can only be with one.

Snail

A world of poetry whistles away
outside my walls of straw and clay,
while presumption shackles my will
with arcane and absurd laws:
No walking barefoot in the grass. 
None of your business. 
No loud music and please, above all, 
No separation from mood.

It is strange, isn't it,
how the ownership of
an anxious reverie
can imprison a prescient muse.

Serving Myself

Evel Knievel,
Alaska crab fishermen,
coal miners,  
soldiers of fortune,
Indy drivers and firefighters.
I'll skip all that
and be eaten by a lion for money.
Millions from Coke, Red Bull and Pepsi.
At last I can go to work and say
that I am brave and I am tasty.

Being an Expert

It's all about specialization out there,
the world's foremost ant observer
knows the skinny on supercolonies
while I drive to the food store
and consume public radio.

Later, the bilingual brain,
struggle pumps, inherited traits,
goosebumps, repetition, graphpaper,
snowflakes and ears.  

After all this time listening
I know a little bit about a lot of things.
I must find something to study,
perhaps
the screen we are projected upon. 

At the Eye Doctor

She says I have Ocular Surface Disease, or dry eyes
and will need to eat fish oil every day forever.
The oil will turn to fat and keep the fluid in.

In a serendipitous twist,
fat people will look thin to me from now on
and I can lay on the bottom of the sea and look around
for as long as I like.

Colanders

We both don't say what we mean sometimes,
you ask me if I'm upset when you mean
that if I were cooking, I would be
serving you eggshells instead of omelettes
and from what and where did that come from, 
and I say nothing when I mean that
I've assumed that you were criticizing my cooking.

But later, we laugh over a mixed-up dessert
that somehow came out alright,
that we share the leftover steam in our hearts,
and the black baked-on defenses,
and even the dirty dishes. 

but that is because we know
the bowls of our woes have holes.

Catwise

Our cat has only six lives now,
one less from the shelter,
one less from being lost for a week,
and one lost to diabetes.
She looks right in my eyes and says
You are a funny animal, 
what with all of your worries.
It's hard to let go but c'mon,
let's bump heads, smell the dawn,
get some gravity into our rest,
let go of this whole idea
that there's something better to do. 

Joy

Usually, joy is a peeling away
like an orange rind off an orange
or it is a lifting off like a bird in flight,
or it can be going in to sweet sunlight
from a wintry shade or passing cloud.

I want rock-solid joy that doesn't move,
can't peel, is comfortable on its foundation,
need never fly or even become warm.

I can make that joy happen,
but only out of myself,
by carving away all the joy
in which I am nascent.

Pine

Out the upstairs window
in the field across the road
is a big lone pine.
I am so quiet I can hear her.
She says
There is nothing else to do. 
There is nowhere else to go. 
It is a message
from outside and inside.

1983, Totowa New Jersey

Harriet, the wizened director
in the crumbling State home
said that the Board was like a mermaid,
prone to looking good on the surface,
but with an ugly tail that does all the work.
It seemed incongruous in her case,
as if through bad luck
she had to swim upside down.

But that's how things were there,
only thirty years ago.
I'd caught Mrs. Thompson
snapping a rubber band
in the face of a client,
and the union didn't like me.
Dr. Carter said retarded people didn't feel pain,
and Dr. Nelson accused me of being in the KKK.

It was as if I'd found myself in a sea
of upside-down mermaids,
struggling to breathe under water
and hitting everything under the sun
with their angry and ill-fitting tails. 

Today's Headlines

2015 Fed Rate Increase Back in Play,
The importance of which is huge
for interest-rate futures traders
who shriek above the mumbling dead. 
This as
NASA's Hubble Spies Galaxies Near Cosmic Dawn,
the interest of which is puzzling,
but I can feel it pulling, the headline,
on a part of me that has nothing to do
with keeping me fed.

Thank you.

Whom do I thank
for your sweet arms
that hold me up
so I can be a good pear,
for your round eyes
that I, a buck exhausted,
drink from in the deep wood,
for the third hand you have grown
only for me, that caresses the heart
I have grown only for you?

My love I thank you,
and not the spirit, not the muse,
not the creator, not this kind and open hour,
not the earth and air of our home,
not what was written long ago,
nor the bright and blank book before us.

My love I thank you. 

What You Must Leave at Heaven's Door

Fresh cow's milk over toasted rice,
A photograph of Zaragoza's high plain,
where your lungs filled with frost
as your legs tumbled sweet blood
up through your young heart,
a thick blue sky over a green spruce forest,
the dark songs of owls,
your lover's musk, fig, and coconut skin,
the masterpiece you wrote this time around

and the satchel that it came in. 

Tolosa-Hunt Syndrome

I'm having headaches and my eyes hurt.
Let's review the conditions I could have:
Tension headaches,
Diabetes,
High blood pressure,
Lyme disease,
Orbital tumor,
Glaucoma,
Corneal abrasion,
Conjunctivitis,
Uveitis,
Neuritis, 
and Tolosa-Hunt Syndrome.
Now, in Tolosa-Hunt Syndrome,
you also have swelling of the fingers,
making it diffi;;ji; to;l;n ; lpe.
This is followed by
death within fifty years,
doubt and ennui,
ecstasy twenty-nine times a year,
and cats.