Ordinary
Ordinary days
Ordinary things
happening in
ordinary ways
Night follows day
Sun follows rain
Seasons slide into one another,
Years roll by.
Time leaves wisps of memory
and then, we recall
how extraodinary were these
ordinary days.
1.
The strongest part of the storm passed by
earlier, taking the clustered pollen
from the old oak tree in the yard.
2.
I ask myself to be honest all day long,
and, if I’m being truthful,
the honesty is not my strength.
I slide into fiction
with the same flat-footed ease
a duck slides into water.
3.
Lies textured smooth like silk ribbon
on a neatly-wrapped gift. Lies grown tired
of themselves, lies like messy packages.
I could no longer keep up
with the untruths and the falsehoods.
4.
Rain hit the roof in pleasant tinny pellets.
This is true. For years, however, I lied
about my age in order to appear older.
I lied to keep the peace and to prevent
worry, to preserve myself,
and I’ve lied for the fun of it.
5.
I am as honest and tired now
as the mule my neighbors owned
when I was on the farm, storytelling.
6.
If I was lying, I wouldn’t tell.
I’d just follow the noise
of the rain into the dark.
my own
singular and adamant leading me
to the door I have kept closed too long
my shaking hand rotates the knob
and pushes hard
no giant gust of fresh air no
blast of bright sun greets me
just a terrifying
o p e n n e s s
my pulse is a bullhorn shouting in my ear
behind me doubt whispers and waits
I feel skin stretch break open and
my invisible self
steps out
Spiny succulent
yellow sun fruit-
shading a short cave
where desert rodents
burrowed with crisped seedcorn
& shredded bits of hide and cloth.
“Tree-cholla” you told me.
“Cold-weather hardy” you said.
“Pocket mouse” you noted.
I don’t miss you.
But I miss where we’ve been.
The deep roar of heavy wheels breaks through
My pleasant perusals and poetic musings.
Recalling an alert ignored in evening rain and repose,
A fresh alarm jars me to early-morning action.
I skitter throughout the house gathering,
Open the door, scramble bare feet on concrete,
Nose slapped by nauseating stench as I empty the porch can
And thud it into a behemoth red belly.
Toes licked by tickling tongues of wet grass,
I hurry to the road towing an awkward load,
Then awaken the dog’s loud disapproval
By shouting my winded gratitude to the sanitation worker I barely outran.
Only a few miles away,
horseshoe-shaped middens
form a protective school
for Royal Doulton Ladies.
Double-sail boat cats
settle on lost linguistics;
their backstamp bottoms-up.
Creatures of a species
of another place’s
origin
Ride the rails
or hitch a ship
or sleep inside
the package,
delivered by tide,
then scampering free,
observe the world
with false hospitality,
eating their way
into our wreckage
To a Redbud in Bighill, Kentucky
Six decades of distracted searching — that rush
to snag the exclusive, meet the deadline,
grab the bargain, boost the credit — & finally now
I notice you. Look, I’ve moved
to the mountain & I’m doing crazy
things — talking back
to whip-poor-wills, transcribing
for the cicada. Right now, I’m under
your heart shaped leaves perched
like a monk, expectant & eager. O tree
of the edges, tree of the understory,
to you I yield. Never once before
have I noticed your whoosh & tingle,
your twisted trunk & I wasn’t expecting your
toughness. I try to break a slender
branch & can’t. I sit
beside you on the slope until
sunset & as your red
brown twigs stretch
like capillaries into the body
of the sky I surrender
even more. Forgive me
I’ve been lost in an American
daze & thank you
for waiting for me. Now, tree
of the tribes, I am
your student. I imagine your ancient
memories whistling forth
in song. A Shawnee mother boils
your tough bark to soothe the whooping
cough of her newborn. She drives
winter out with your boughs, uses every
crackly seed. Take the scraps
of me, the tree sings, thread
my limber branches into baskets
with star patterns & handles.
