The journey of life is akin to planting the crops,
cultivating the fields and harvesting the bounty.
Let us nurture the fields well and rejoice in our
harvest.

I’m on an airplane cruising where
light’s too bright to see beyond the windshield
and nobody’s visible in the cockpit  

Five or six of us in a square
sit in wooden kindergarten chairs
sullen, sour, each in his own way
like the waiting room of a doctor’s office  

The silent din of jet engines
thrusts vertically through the others
mostly over their heads as steady noise  

I move to a chair in the back where
some guy in a windbreaker
thinks that he’s Paul Newman  

I explain: It’s quieter here  

He doesn’t object
or call it an intrusion
He’s about to show me
some of his tricks
but I fade as the medicine kicks in      

                      #  

When I awake I’m seven feet tall
All the other kids are small
They’re throwing me a birthday party
of genuine generosity
A doctor with an ophthalmoscope
amongst them stands
prepared to examine my eyes  

I hide in the bathroom   

I end up laid out on a table
The doctor keeps examining my eyes
from every distance and angle   

I’m trying to cooperate
but don’t know what I wished
or what he’s looking for

the vulture and the duck
share a bath in the sun
we stand in the shade

I’m trying not to be offended by
the generation of plunder and vanish
spreading like a stain,  
and it swallows you with its hardness.
Your mind is a papery hive sliced open—
all the things you’re supposed to never mind.
It’s hard to see anything but severedness.

The whole world is burning or sliding into the sea
and she was tired of it all
like a loose tooth at the back of her mouth,
holding on by just a few threads.
What are you willing to believe,
what are you willing to ignore?

This is a poem about
that intrinsic knowing
the sumptuous nature of moving slowly,
the richness of rest.
Let’s try this again, I say to no one. I’m still here.

Go back into the green, green world.
There are ways of listening to those delicacies,
those radiance systems
where everything is vast and pristine,
a dream of wildness,
a whirlpool of silence
where she goes to hear herself speak.

She imagined she can pull all that hush around her.
It is blossoms that I want,
a rippling ocean of green,
the sky reflected in every body of water.
Bury the broken thinking in the backyard.
Everything is begging you. Come home.

I’m trying again to learn how to live with
wild tendernesses:        
       the tree mapping its history,
       swallows diving in and out,
       their fabled forked tails,
       leaves curled like questions,       
        kneeling in dirt, inhaling,
        pressing all that promise into the soil,
        the earthen color of the river,
        the flowers just now aching into bloom.  

All I can whisper is thank you
at that spot where the world leaks in.
It offers us to ourselves at every turn.
You can still imagine rapture.
Store it in your heart’s farthest chambers,
a way to keep belief near.
Tremble like dogwood,
feeling the rain touch down,
wild beautiful petals all around—
valves moistened in our mouths.

~ A cento, using lines/phrases from the following books:

All the Fierce Tethers, essays by Lia Purpura
Blade by Blade, poetry collection by Danusha Laméris
Entwined, Three Lyric Sequences, poetry by Carol Frost
Hereafter, fiction by Sarah Freligh
The Hurting Kind, poetry collection by Ada Limón
Wings, or Does the Caterpillar Dream of Flight? poetry collection by Cathryn Essinger
Maps of Injury, poetry collection by Chera Hammons
The Ghost of Every Feathered Thing, poetry collection by Paula J. Lambert
When We Were Gun, poetry collection by Deborah Schupack
Everything Gets Old, poetry collection by Grace Curtis

I no longer walk to get fit 
but to see the sights,
my suburban streets —

the rusting red tricycle, 
portable basketball goal
net ragged gray,

the peeling fire plug 
where all the neighborhood dogs 
lift a leg,

the house where 
the owner was murdered
by a jealous lover,

the church steeple struck by lightning,
a driveway with its faded coat
of black tar —

this body limping along,
war-weary rebel laboring down
flowery ways and gruff avenues, 

mind in contemplation
of the connectedness
between myself and others,

these my neighbors, 
my sisters and brothers 
in time.

Death will probably come to me
wearing shoes too beautiful for the weather
and a linen top – maybe asymmetrical
and forgiving around the ribs.
Death will probably have a tote bag
and arrive on an electric scooter,
listening to a podcast
about decluttering.
Death might be carrying a lidless coffee cup
because plastic lids are bad for the environment
and point out that mushroom coffee is a lifesaver.
Death may have just purchased handmade jewelry
from someone named Willow
at a craft fair in a converted warehouse.
Death might smell faintly of patchouli,
wet dog,
and cosmic inevitability.
Death may have spent the afternoon
arguing online with strangers
about heirloom tomatoes
or might be mildly irritated
by the woman at the diner
who got the bill wrong and believed
that grief was a portal.
Death may have a tattoo
in a language no longer spoken
by the living.
Death will certainly not know
where all the missing socks go.
Some mysteries are bigger than Death.
Death may ask if I mind waiting a moment
while they finish a phone call.
I’ll wait politely, of course, and ask Death
to show me that photograph of
the universe at eight minutes old
poking from the tote bag.
Death might tell me they’re trying to stay more present.
Death will probably be wondering why
they haven’t come up with some automated self-checkout system
already so one could finally sit down and
finish that memoir.
Death might notice the unfinished poem on my desk,
and my sorry face,
and will most probably just say
“That’s fine, we’ve got better things to do.”

Thelma is new to me, but not truly new-new
She has the aroma of one who has been
around the block a time or two,
but she still has that Armor-All shine.
I named her for the freedom
she brought with her and I sing
her praises for each year, each mile.

She’s eyeing retirement with a grin,
And cannot be priced at her true value,
for it is too much to me, too little
to those boors on FB Marketplace.
She needs a Louise to truly appreciate
her. Alas, I need to get to work
in the morning without wanting to
jump the cliff.

when most would begin to rejoice  work’s repose
thursday afternoon
velocity my weeks pace 
twining down   as if

the bed-side alarm clock from 1975  
the grandfather clock in my nonna’s entry
the watch bedecking the wrist of the banker I see from some long ago vantage

sage advice in the timekeepers of old
take time to rewind
or cessation becomes absolute

a sobriety enfolds the week’s ending moments  
while sure-footed conviction still reigns-
it must after all  or what then is left in our hands-
a weight  so densely serious this surity now 
I temper its taunt with flowers
fresh fruit
the tang of a crisp ice tea
the distant siren of the ice cream truck jingle

the week unfolds 
the years though have taught me  a drunken delight  doing will come again

Everyone must leave something behind. . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die. —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

My soul will be very confused.
Will it have as hard a time settling as I do now?

Ray must not have been old and lived a long and creative life when he wrote about what the soul must touch

or

he would have known that was a ridiculous thought.

Imagine the confusion of old age having to focus on one thing,

or

Shall I,
the soul will have to ask,
break into millions of tiny pieces so that I will be able to enter each thing touched over the decades?

or

will my soul have a wait and see attitude till after I die
to see who picks up one thing or another and then settle in on the piece a loved one carries off with a part of me with them?

All the rest of the touched stuff will kindly get hauled to the curb empty of my soul never haunting the poor person that rummages through it simply wanting to pick a thing or two they can use guilt free.