creates a vision
that transports your partner
and preserves the gossamer tulle
in acid-free tissue
for unshapely days to come

Please, please
don’t block the door
on such sleepless nights.

Don’t ask me to conjure
the future. The future?
The very air is burning.

surprised
as I thought
by this point the scenario would be different
altered, I’d be on my way
yet clearly that is not the case
I am unsure now
in need of evaluation
I am lost in my own space, the place I know well
will the answers come
or do I have the only answer
surprised
I move forward to face this day

Pink  
mist  
spawned from  
north crimson  
glowing – transient  
mirroring far-off Milky Way – dense.   

His black leather shoes
beside his chair, newly reheeled,
insides warm, too large for me to fill 
— that old cliche — him snoring, 
two vodka tonics in, 
fleck of heavy casserole on his chin,
something on the console TV,
Bonanza or Lost In Space.

He never shared his dreams,
what he wanted to be
before life got in the way,
what would be the point
except to create waves.
The closest he came
was at the air museum
when he lingered by the fighter jets, 
how he touched their silver skin. 

One time my brothers and I 
recorded him snoring 
and played it back,
volume cranked,
mocking, teasing mercilessly:

the chair still sags 
from the weight of him.

Each year the table tilts a little more
Amd things roll off it to the floor

My health, my kicks, my energy
My body’s pain free functionality

All down there rolling around
With the dust, on the carpet, on the ground

Inaccessible to me, unavailable
Rolling off the tilted terrible table

What I still have is my memory
Or is that the group soul speaking, just a story

But some pieces of my memory are jagged
They won’t roll off if they’re jaded and ragged

They cling tenaciously, I have that at least
And my window

On the southwest corner of my house
The view west toward the lakes
And the endless prairies
It buffets the storms
In its rattly and leaky way
And shows the passing seasons
The nights, the days and my gardens

It’s what I have left and available
And the fragments on the tilted table

Amazing thing. Every summer
an ancient mariner,
the shimmering Atlantic, crawls ashore, covers sand
and returns to sea, 
emerges and scrambles – beginning a long and dangerous journey.

Go to the window.
It isn’t raining now,
but it surely will.

Wait, and things will grow
beyond even your dreams
and wakeful imaginings.

For now, take the landscape
as proper for this moment,
as preparation for later.

The night unwinds.  And I’m alone.
Below, shadows like rabbits
slip from holes at the terminus
of lines of sunken dirt
to play.

                                                                        I sit with a cold can
                    in my hand, wondering if they, too, smell smoke
                    where there is no fire
within sight.

                                                            How do you say goodnight
                                                                 without an ear to hear?

You close your eyes and breathe the spectral scent
of her, lifted—phantom wisps—from your clothes.

You feel the black-silk-press of her mouth against
yours, still lingering.  Still lingering.

You taste the sharp, sweet remnant of her—
brush of fingertip, scratch of nail—
like a rune drawn across your lips.

The Night unwinds—the day withdrawing
without a word—

                                                              so many things far away;
                                                          so many things left undone.

But the night yet unwinds,
whispering, 
                      whispering,

                                                                              some things burn
                                                                                     without sight.