as i turn my car on,
the slow, steady blow
of the air conditioning
reminds me of family
roadtrips—-driving into
the mountains
how we’d wake up earlier
than usual to get a head start
to the day
that cool air refreshes me
before i turn it off,
roll down the window,
& listen to the morning birds
i make a sound of contentment
when i smell the blooming flowers
it feels like fall for the first time today i love being alone for the first time today
pop the tab on a coke from the freezer it’s freezing
the breeze is grazing my leg hair through the screen
and i forgot i’m making eggs in the frying pan
to put on seeded bread i put seeds in the eggs
i usually make two but i only need one
the bread in the oven is done
balanced precariously moon
rests on antlers of a pine
cool light washes every grass
each red-blood paintbrush bud
outlines tumbled cones fractured
rocks with weightless silver leaf
mountain meadow
limned with early frost
despite summer constelleations
death is compressed with-
in one white fist of owl
its long shadow stretched to touch
the indistinct thrum of a distant
route where twin cones of light
desperately search for
structure
I watch as they fall,
a ballet of sprigs,
needles, and leaves,
floating down
on a slow wind.
I make a bed
from their death.
Cradle myself
in their decay.
Make pillows
from their demise.
And when I sleep,
my head on their bodies,
their scent on my skin,
I dream of spring.
My wife’s the one who brought me Kevin.
She’s known around the world for doing stuff like that.
If we happen to be together,
she’ll gift me little things
right on the spot
like that one time
in Copenhagen
Copenhagen Denmark
not the one we drive through when visiting Fort Drum
but the real one
where we saw the Czechoslovak puppeteers
and she went right up to them and said,
“My boyfriend has a question for you”
and thumbed in my direction
when I didn’t have a question
or
a clue.
And if she’s off
by herself
on one of those old-lady walks she likes so much to take
she’ll bring the little gifties home
when she good-and-well decides
the time has come for feeling something like
return
and she’ll gift them to me then.
Sometimes she’ll bring me stories,
other times she’ll bring me ginko leaves or such-like stuff –
you know the kind of stuff –
stuff designed to let me know how smart I am
to love her.
And this time
she brought Kevin.
Through Ball or Gone
Sometimes when I play
FIFA by myself
I still look to pass the ball
To you like i do blunts
We’d piece together
Sometimes I look
At the ash pile on the floor
I sweep it up quietly
Careful to get it all
But it never comes clean
Love rallies,
One desperate gasp before the
final slumped
fall to the floor.
Quiet as drowning,
the halting of
inefficient movements.
No witnesses but
the shocked victims.
on a not-quite-summer
Sunday afternoon.
It should have been cheddar
except that I took
the wrong credit card to Meijer’s,
it was expired,
and when I went back
to correct by stupid mistake,
I got distracted by Rainier cherries,
the kind that are not quite yellow
and not red, either,
like the ones you bought me
at that market in Seattle
on a not-quite-summer
Sunday afternoon
back when everything was still ahead of us.
