Bought My Sister’s Property at Auction
This year of rain
flooded my basement
soon after I moved in.
The drain
took eight days of torment
and nights before I win
the battle, sweeping
each of ten daily,
nightly attacks,
sweeping,
every thirty minutes, wearily,
water toward the sump pump, wet tracks
following me upstairs each step I take.
My friend, my age, laughed bent over,
when I told her we had become seriously aged.
“Seriously aged? What does that mean?”
No more greeting card humor, I responded, covering
up the facts, poking fun at 50 or even 60,
as if it were all one big joke. No one teases
us about being 79.
It’s the real thing.
My friend stopped laughing for a bit, “Seriously?
It is all one big joke, isn’t it?
I forget about it most of the time.”
Well, I do, too, I answer.
But I forget a lot of things.
1
the wind in your face
the breath of the Atlantic
gives you mouth to mouth
2
a gull fights the breeze
hovers just above your head
a kite on a string
3
the sound of the waves
thunders over & over
there is nothing else
4
the ocean wants us
the undertow pulls us in
the sirens calling
5
footprints in the sand
the tide erases them all
we were never here
We at the Farmer’s Market miss you!
In fact, just yesterday the corn
was asking about you.
Wind that covers skin like a thin layer of frost
Seeking out the kiss of the sun
So wonderful and warm
Breathing in air that catches at the back of the throat
Chilled and cool as the breath escapes
Exhaled hot evaporating into the clouds
Apricity
Such a word that creates
A tingling upon the tongue
With how the sounds click
From the teeth to tongue
Apricity
Such a feeling that expresses
Joy of the autumn sun across my face
Yet laments the sorrow of knowing
Summer has ended
And the light grows shorter
Each passing day
The parula’s notes cascade
up the scale as if seeking
a loft where birdsong gems rest,
facets of every color
bathing in June’s sunshine—wren’s
golden tones, robin’s ruby
cheer, song sparrow’s emerald trills.
I can’t see what I see but I see it
I can’t hear what I hear but I hear it
That’s the conundrum
That’s the trick
Us not solving it makes us sick
A couple of years after I started
I found the practice of law absurd and quit
Otherwise the word “Juncture”
Would be in my daily vocabulary
Lexocon and habit
Its own little jones was that it
Refused to appear in public
The press or courtroom without its ancillary,
Its two little cousins, “at” and “this”
Holding hands, always kissing
At this juncture Judge, , we decline a plea
At this juncture, we have no hand to play
At this juncture, we stonewall, we lie quiet, freely and frequently
At this juncture, we affectuate our escape
We run, we hide, we lay low, all part of the job
So I quit the law
Turned to a life of language
With its own kind of strife
A life of prosody, playing with words
Because I had nothing to say and wanted nothing to do
