It doesn’t matter
if you have stripes, it matters
if you have the votes. 

All good things must come to an end.

For seven years you’ve been by side.
Kept me going;
helped me stay clean.
You even were there through my whole family’s baggage.

After all the repeated cycles—
regardless if it happened every week, every other, or just once a month,
you remained.
No matter how much heat came your way,
you stood firm.

I know at times it was hard,
especially the way some things tumbled.
Though I put a lot of pressure on you—
and many days the load was heavy—
you still persevered and allowed me to be soft.

I didn’t tell you how much I appreciated you.
I was often impatient and took you for granted.
I know it didn’t seem like it,
but I loved your dry sense of humor.
       It got me through.

I hate you’ll be separated from your partner in grime.
You all have been together for many seasons—
longer than I’m even aware of.

Well, I’m going to miss you, dryer.
May you rest in repurposable pieces.

I’m tired of being your illusion,

of reflecting back to you

what you want to see

just to keep the peace.

I’m tired of being a ghost,

something only half-alive,

dead to my own desires.

I’m tired of pretending,

of sharing in this denial

and delusion,

helping perpetuate it.

I’m tired of being tired,

of escaping into sleep

every chance I get,

just to be free from this existence

for a while.

–they call it frozen:
shoulder won’t ascend, straighten,
but it just claims Pain.

like a cat
at a corner
store
i am outstretched
completely and totally unbothered
no worries except 
what my next lunch
should be

Will I recognize
the shape of your neck
when I pick you up
to play again?

My forgotten love.

Always the time-maker
never the time.

How many picks 
have you eaten,
since our last song?

I am sure I could
love you no matter who you
have been or become.

When people say “I wish I had talent” 
I say, “Talent is just true love”

Lord, I confess there are days I envy your birds. Not so much their hollow bones
and feathered wings that give them flight. 
        It’s that no one tells them to hallow your name, or how.

You say you have every one counted, know when each fledgling perched on the edge
of its nest feels the needful prod of its mother’s beak between shoulder blades,
        you see them jump, flap twice, fall. They still fall.

Lord, do you see them falling? Somewhere over the green moss of Washington State,
four pilots running routine flight maneuvers collide in their black war hawks.
        Their soft bodies hit every branch on the way down.

But the mama bird will not demand to know why. She will not fail to pray
for twelve arid months. She will never casketside hear the phrase,
        Everything happens for a reason.

She will not spend her nights on theodicies, will make no attempt to justify the ways of God to man. She knows nothing of God or man, lucky mother.
       How light she must feel

unburdened by the many heavy doctrines I spend my life beneath. Perhaps that’s really how she has flight, not science or aerodynamics.
        Lord, I’m sorry. Lord, I can’t imagine you’re very easily offended.

I know that pain is only human. I guess what I mean is, if others are right,
and we do get a second chance in this life, I think I’d like to return
        as something less tender.

Somewhere under a Kentucky blue sky, I walk my neighborhood streets
as a thousand birds sweep overhead
        held up by some unknowable gift.