Stumbling around my house,  
wondering if it was ever even mine. 
While building my home I made one terrible decision.

Now, I live in a haunted house of my own errors. 
I invited in a demon with no mercy or soul. 
She took everything I loved and destroyed it in front of my eyes. 

Leaving me,
with the memory of her laughter echoing off the hard surfaces in the rooms. 

The day she arrived,  
I observed as pieces of me got torn off the walls. 
My pictures, my carefully selected pieces of furniture,  
and the clock my grandma hung over the fireplace before she died. 
She took everything when she moved out. 

The devil left nothing behind, 
as she roared through my life like a fucking tornado. 
Leaving me with nothing….  
except my naive dream of never seeing her again. 

The sweet smell of sawdust took her on a ride to her childhood,
like looking out the window while riding the northbound train.

Her father, a woodworker gave her a bag of sawdust and wood shavings
to play with, simple objects to amuse her for hours.

She pulled out the odd shaped shavings and lined them up,
train cars to carry her dreams to unknow destinations.

She learned to identify wood sources from the scents and colors,
cedar, oak, pine, hickory, birch and the coveted mahogany.

Shavings and dust mixed up, culinary delights to place on doll 
plates as delectable desserts from his workshop.

Perfumed wood, a gallery of scents and hues, as if in blown glass
bohemian decanters lined up on her windowsill.

I’m thinking you grew up like me,
taught to keep your knees together,
be sweet, obedient, let your grandparents kiss
and hug you even though you didn’t like it.
Did your mother teach you, like mine, to kick
those boys between the legs if they get fresh?
Did you figure on your own how to insert a tampax,
or was it your girlfriends who gave directions
through the bathroom door?  Did you learn
to French kiss and where to put your hands
by practicing in the camp bunk, or was it a boy?
Maybe you remember the winter chill of your thighs
as you walked to school in pleated skirt and knee sox.
If you are still with me, ask why no one told us
about the sneaky transformations of old age.
That parts will thin and shrink and fall. 
That your body will learn to sweat, bring to mind
every smelly man you ever knew.  And not only
whiskers on your chin that you now recall
your grandma plucking at her dressing table,
but eyebrows which will suddenly sprout
the wild and wiry hairs of your Uncle Joe.     

“The Longest Day of the Year,”
I remember you’d say it,
like clockwork, as if for the
first time. Then sometimes we’d sit,
   soaking up the extension
   of orange and pink glowing skies.
Now, practice barefoot grounding,
amidst the summer solstice
moon, absorbing surroundings
lit by twinkling stars and the
    glow of summer and new starts
    confirmed by grass-covered feet.

Sunday, I stopped at Burger King

Uncle Sam don’t pay enough to employ experts
don’t pay me enough to supervise industrial alcohol plants
or outwit crafty moonshiners and smugglers whose pockets bulge
to count out barrel rings to be sure every barrel got burned
hunker against a cold brick wall with my feet in snow
waiting for hours just to maybe see Patrolman Percy
or his boys hefting Canadian hooch
fifty bucks a week ain’t enough for this boy to walk into a gun fight  

the pleasures of good food and drink, a bit of jazz, are denied me
but my buddies and me know to hold back some when we raid
So when Isaac Murphy approached me said he’d pay me
a hundred a week if I’d look the other way
say I found no bottles in flour sacks on the box cars
that left his farm on Vaugh’s Creek
ignore the stash he had in his customized Cadillac –  

Damn straight I was in
and never got caught.

playful hands sneak down
and roam where they please

searching for a quickening pulse
or shortening of breath

fingers dance quicksteps in double time
and ultimately slow upon partnering with mine

like a mantra against my exposed sin; I guess
I deserve this. I remember Halloween’s storming,
the fear I felt then, how it haunts me like an old
compatriot—I tell it I no longer care, I want
this now, the warmth of shared fabric, the respite from
rain. What else can I do but surrender? What else
can I do but rest in the comfort of all those things
you said you’d never do?

A common occurrence in Eastern Kentucky
occurs when a person falls asleep in their car.
An onlooker passes by, like they did this morning,
noticing the leopard-print jacket is slumped against the seat,
the trim hair and necklace tipped at odd angles to the passerby,
a hundred thoughts blooming in an instant:
“Is that a woman?”
“Is she alright?”
“Is she alive?”
“Is that a dead body or someone just sleeping?”
Even the frantic jolt 
as she returned to life,
was a motion I had seen enacted
a hundred times a hundred times
by myself and many others.
Her fastidious resurrection
on my way into the building
forced me to ask myself,
“Am I living or just passing by?”

As a reader, I like Robert Frost’s poetry.

As a teacher, I appreciate it.

As for my students, they tolerate it at the “I do it” stage

If I include video or audio or some other bells and whistles.

(Sorry Robert Frost)

The “we do it” stage of the lesson is pretty technical and I fear its 

Distraction from the joy, but then

The “I do it” creates such gems as,

“Whose shoes these are I wish I knew,

I know for sure they’ve stepped in poo.”

This sacrilege made me laugh the way a “Dust of Snow” did.

Of course, I teach middle school school.

Did Robert Frost have a sense of humor?