afternoons
finches and wasps peek
torn window screen their foothold
they see me sewing
When you speak of home
I wonder what you picture now
sweet-scented Kentucky spring
laughing as we drive past fields of cows,
baking cookies, making puns
sitting on the couch as dad teaches you
chords and harmony
or is home campus and a world
of cement and carefully chosen dorm gear, a picture
your life is painting,
sitting on the floor in late-night conversation
and young adults who only know you
in relation to you,
rooms where you shape your life
beyond our knowing
experience expands meaning; life
and language both dynamic
I’m going home
is a different statement
than one year ago
still rooted in love,
but not in space, growing wherever
you find yourself
With a huge wound
in its bark
a ragged foot high, uncovering
half of its circumference,
the whiteness of the hundred year old maple tree
cried out like a Nun stripped naked
in a witch hunt.
It started innocently,
putting a sap spigot in the big tree in our front yard.
Then it was another personality
that started whacking bark
wielding my red handled hatchet
at the huge black trunk
with a malicious intent
I knew nothing of, had no emotional attachment.
I could only watch.
Like a dream where the central character
is you: killing people, stealing babies, setting fires.
No, No, it is not you.
It really wasn’t me,
I pleaded to my Father
as he silently drew out his belt.
The answers to my story
are always the same.
“You’re better off…”
“You’ll find someone else…”
“Something so brittle was bound to break.”
I very much want them to be wrong about you
but I can’t make you prove it
and I can’t wait forever.
In between those two endings,
so precious little I know how to say.
– i –
the way home was exhaustive.
asphalt is an acquired taste…
the perambulant rolls under you
and gathers in your spirit
before it wastes away like
over-ripened fruit, as a pumpkin,
perhaps, on a front stoop
two wintery weeks into november.
the more the distance,
the stronger my lonely.
i missed home, but got use to it
(or got use to the use-to-it lie).
could never grow accustomed
to the cold. i am chilled,
even in the sun; and the ghost
of hillside greenery leaves me numb
until i hate the horizon
~ all of its directions mock me.
a gray sky replies: home,
is not this way; turnaround
(i am always spinning!)
and if mornings
are a looking glass
into the world,
then these are already
a rerun. and if the world
burns on a dime, then know
that i have a pocket full.
– ii –
it’s better
that you have found me now
so that you might befriend
my bitter, because i can
no longer pacify winter,
passing myself off as dawn.
All the best poems
by all the best poets;
all the true prophecies
of all the truest prophets
may as well be runes
carved into the bench
where people sit and wait
for The Only Bus That Matters,
too dazed by the work
of everyday living to try
and figure out the runes
enough to get some clues
about why everyday living
has to be so much work,
much less about where
said Bus might be going.
Narrative as a Thumb Navigating a Smartphone
Somebody somebody somebody
out there
loves you
thinks you’re funny
wise
an astute political observationist
but not here
right now
back—look! why can’t you love like they love?
refresh
back—look! baby goats doing human stuff. You will literally die.
refresh
return
to where I just was
just in case
somebody missed you
browsing.
I’ve got the whole…b u f f e r i n g…
world beneath me.
Including you.
