I need to talk
doesn’t need
to sound like
I need to talk

It can still be an invitation-
I’d like the chance
to sit and talk with you-
necessary, but without the sharpness

A text, hours in advance
gives time to prepare
for quality conversation
because blindsides aren’t always fair

With a way out-
could be today or tomorrow-
gives you all the time you need
to run if you so choose

Your acceptance sets the stage
A storm makes landfall
and two adults engage
in a peaceful conflict of hearts

The problem is presented
understanding is offered
reasons are challenged
then bitter pills are swallowed

But how much better for us
to turn devastation
into a minor downpour
so friendship can thrive

The next days may be tricky
The sting may never linger long
but we will see each other again
so all that’s left now to say

is thank you

What is a                     tanka      
        

              glorified
But a                        haiku    

Some summer  cock
                                     tail     
 

                                             h                     n
Syllables stirred not    s        a          e
                                                        k 

  Iced spirits    s    w    e     e     t       on the tongue

to me, nothing beats

feeling my music through some

quality headphones.

sadness builds in my heart as the realization hits:

the sun will sink a bit faster than yesterday and

the light will dim quicker along the horizon

how lucky to witness the full illumination
to understand the sorrow that accompanies its slow retreat

(6/20/2024, the moment of the solstice)

4:35
Near the end,
past four Great Mullein plants
their seven foot erections
bowing down in the heat,
I walk to the deep shade
behind the hemp pond
to rest in the hammock 
and swing slowly between
locust and maple,
like a slow leak
the sky trickles out
and falls into my hollow nap.
I will not look at my watch,
but wait and wait,
it will happen everywhere
at once for everyone and
everything on earth,
this common moment
this pull of the thread
when we’re one

4:51
I feel it:
the end 
the beginning, that now
and again now, and now, and now
tilts the earth back,
this biannual action
ordinary as a grasshopper.
Summer can race on with its
milkweed
butterfly bush
blue chicory

5:07
I consider that this is the season
I will be seventy-six
and get up from the hammock
to exit my cool retreat. Down the hill
along the road, I hear
the mailman at the box.
The page is turned.

Sound: Birds, water, children, quiet

Obviously I have wasted my life
chasing poems rather than dollars,
and as any rugged man could guess,
I hold my copy of Above the River
in soft, effeminate hands.

Our Father who art in Heaven
let me hear his angels sing into
the distances of a long-ago afternoon,
and since then I haven’t cared
about anything but re-creating that tune
or starving in moth-eaten garb trying to,

a ridiculous hammerless Noah
building an ark out of words in a world
that doesn’t believe in words or the coming apocalypse.

Listen to the cowbells, I say,
and everyone thinks it’s a Christopher Walken reference.
They say poetry is horseshit, and I say yes,
but lit up by lightning so it blazes like gold.

It’s fool’s gold to them.
I can’t even buy a bronze butterfly
with my last royalty check,
but as Robert Graves said, “there is no money
in poetry, but neither is there poetry in money.”

the more we experience,
the more we know,
or so we think

the more times we do it,
the more certain we are,
even when we are wrong

the more we read,
the more our minds expand,
or so we tell ourselves

the more we study,
the more we know,
or so the unwise believe

the more we say it,
even just inside our heads,
the more we believe it true

but knowing is this–
your body, pressed to mine,
fingers exploring,
warm lips finding,
two becoming one

Not every day is a 
struggle.  Even if it’s 
hard to remember.

All I can do to move sometimes,
to stay on my feet.  Tunnel
vision grows long, limbs

leaden.  Feel the meds
battling this venom spreading.
Everyone says, “brush it off, it

can’t be that bad.”  Well, sometimes 
it is and I can’t help that.
Time takes the sting from memory.

Stinger sticks to skin,
pressure to grip, pull it out,
only injects more.

A person is a dream. To end
full of contagion, fear, and sick
smeared across the Book of Life
carbon black ink like ancient times.

Placed in a soul so it must know,
A person is a dream. To end
gasping and languid. Unsure of
what legacy may well survive?

Around which starlight vines embrace
carrying back which was given.
A person is a dream. To end
with void. No more than ideas.

A body grows like anything
else. No greater than blades of grass
sheared and returned to the Earth.
A person is a dream. To end.