Poem: October 31, 2019

October 31st

Maybe a Halloween poem
is too easy, a piece of candy
to be unwrapped or thrown
into the pile. Days of orange
and black and all the comic
iconography of death- skulls
and bones and bloody axes,
ghosts and vampires, rats
and tombstones- our modern
take on waiting for our saints,
role-playing, escapism, and
a coded statement of faith,
play-acted to say that people
find their twisted ways back.
And we have nothing really
to be afraid of when it's all
just made up and extreme
and meant to get a reaction,
to rev our engines, to shock
our systems, to hurry our
hearts, and aren't we safe
when our transactions are
binary (trick or treat) and
really just ritualist exercises
in pre-determined outcomes.
But it wasn't long ago (though
all of history feels long ago)
that this night would have
been violent, people injured
and truly scared, property
stolen, damaged, set ablaze.
But not today, not today, not
on this date in which congress
is debating impeachment with
all their hyperbolic speeches,
and Twitter is banning political
ads while Facebook fills our
digital neighborhoods with a
cacophony of unchecked and
unrestrained rhetoric, and we
run our children through
active shooter drills, and to
stop the fires burning across
California, we are turning out
the lights, while our pockets
fill with storm warnings and
sponsored content and the lies
that troll-bots tell. All of this,
and the kids we would return
to across the promised veil
are walking up and down our
haunted streets, collecting
plastics and sugars in the cold
mist past the flapping wings
of campaign signs, drifting
with their faces hidden and
their open hands out, from
house light to house light and
delighting in all the fear that we,
their many parents, can create.

Poem: October 30, 2019

Stance

I'm telling you that you can do anything. You can fly. You can
build buildings. You can cook delicious meals. You can win
someone's heart and if you lose it, you can win it back. You can
learn to speak five languages. You can design and sell a t-shirt.
You can lead nations and rescue children and feed the hungry.
And you can sing and draw and do math. And you can win an
argument. You can travel the world. You can be your own boss.
You can overcome the obstacles and find the resources and build
coalitions and recover from your failings and every other adversity.
You can forgive. You can bend. You can lead by influence. You
can carry a burden and you can break free. You can rewire your
brain, rewrite history. You can do anything. You can even believe
in the darkest hour, faced with impossible odds, that you can.

Poem: October 29, 2019

Strange

Suppose you dream of an old friend,
an old home, an old path where you
used to put your feet. Someplace rich
with wood and leather and books, or
quiet and grassy where a cool breeze
blows. Someone who wears a jersey
or a cardigan sweater, someone who
smokes or with whom you disagree.

Suppose you dream about the things
far beyond the periphery of your life,
with no logical connection to where
and with whom you now spend your
time, so removed, in fact, as to have
been dug up from a grave, a deep cut,
something from deep in the archives.

Suppose you have a dream so odd
and mysterious that lingers like fog,
as real and unreal as the feel of an
ancient language carved on a mossy
stone and revealed to you in the deep
grooves you trace with your fingertips.

What's to be done but wonder that
such things fail to wear away from us,
that we have caverns left to explore.

Poem: October 28, 2019

Unexpected Sunday

I would just like to say that
yesterday, because you made
me go outside and do things
with my hands in the cool
bright sun and the lingering
memory of rain, I enjoyed
myself. Even though I bent
the crossbar of the chain link
fence when the full weight
of the dead tree I sawed down
took its unexpected path to
the ground, and even though
I later broke the handle of
the axe on the very first swing,
I had a satisfying afternoon
because we cleared away the
brush and fallen limbs, and
cleaned the muck out of the
gutters, and maybe sealed
the places on the roof where
the water gets in, and in our
trips between sawbuck and
woodpile and fire pit, we had
the time to talk about nothing
really big, but in the process,
we lit that fire, and we rested
there for a minute or two, you
leaning on the shovel, me
stirring the ash around, a few
moments centered, which
was for me, a warm extension
to a good day spent with you.

Poem: October 27, 2019

Final Thoughts

What if at the end of life
we could sit out in the sun
on soft and mossy turf with
everything in the distance,
golden sunlit fields stretched
out to a horizon of hazy grey-
blue hills, a single white
horse shaking its mane and
far away, a thin dirt trail
winding toward the shallows
at the bend of a dancing
river, and birds, yes, and a
breeze, stones and trees.

And what if, in finding
ourselves there, our earthly
attachments began to fall
away, without sadness, just
small tugs of soft gratitude.
Our eyeglasses and jewelry,
our belts and shoes, our books
and bags, and the many things
we carry in our pockets, our
clothing, even the ink from
our tattoos, leaving only the
collection of our atoms, here
and at a distance, not even
a stone wall or airplane or
building in sight, and there
would be no human sounds,
no music, no ticking clocks,
no voices near or through
the phone, just the warm and
passing world, and the flock
within ourselves, fluttering
and ready to take flight.

Poem: October 26, 2019

Artful

Perhaps all we have
are the pictures we paint
for one another

of ideal weddings and
neighborhoods. classrooms
and homes, our futures together.

Our brushes drip with promises
and warnings, paint mixed
with what can and must not be.

We create great galleries
of dreams, museums to herd
each other through, designed

to move masses, to stir up
the heavy parts of us,
prone to sinking

to the bottom of the can.
What is is not what could be.
What is is what we agree

to find beautiful, frightening, true.
If enough of us gaze long
enough, if we find ourselves

together, gazing back, then
haven't we found our great society?
Haven't we come to consensus?

Together we outline Heaven.
Together we extrapolate Hell.
Bold colors, thick lines and frames.

Think about the power
of our shared definitions, the logic
of tenets, best practices, rites, and systems.

Behold the self-fulfillment
of governments and parties,
the infallibility of religions,

born from the human gut,
the sticky reason of pain and longing,
the cruelty of the self and the every.

Perhaps all we have
are the pictures we paint,
and we will always be painting.

Poem: October 25, 2019

Matter

Somewhere in the future, maybe
near, maybe far, there will be wars
and governments will fall, possibly
ours, and storms will alter the
landscape, and this house will rot
into the ground, and no one on this
planet will have a picture of us or
even know who we are. And so
many species will go extinct and
humanity will forget itself. And
galaxies will collide or drift out
farther apart from one another.
And even particles will separate,
matter will become dust, and the
last energy will one day blink into
darkness. But that is not today
because you are here playing with
the cats and laughing, and I am
cooking dinner and drinking wine,
and Soph is practicing pirouettes
across the kitchen floor, and you
and I found time yesterday to
make out for a bit, and tomorrow
we'll rake the the yard. And if we
manage to clean the house, we'll
invite some people over, and that
is all we have that really matters.

Poem: October 24, 2019

What Are You Complaining About?

I was once the five-year-old me, and
then the ten-year-old me, and the
sixteen and twenty-one and thirty-
year-old me, and I had to deal with
long-distance charges and rewinding
movies we'd rented. I used a card
catalog and looked up information in
books and edited with correction tape
and watched Scooby-Doo on a twelve
inch black and white TV at precisely
4:00 PM on weekday afternoons, and
had to run to the bathroom during
the commercial breaks. I took photos
with flashcubes and waited a week
to get them back, and I listened to
the Eagles and John Lennon on
8-Tracks. I drove a car that took
leaded gas, and in high school, I had
to take a typing class, and I remember
that my grandfather had shoe horns
and shaving brushes and a leather
punch and coffee cans full of nails.
And he also did the dishes by hand.
And one day, you will be the fifty-
year-old you, and I will be the eighty-
year-old me, and neither of us will
ever perceive the fact of our suffering.

Poem: October 23, 2019

Containers

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.

-- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

And where will my soul reside?

In my children.

Riley, kind and clever, 
self-principled, generous,
passionate and present,
with capable hands
to hold a soul.

Annie, bright and curious,
driven to mastery, wise,
adept and insightful,
with a wide-ranging mind
to understand a soul.

Sophia, artful and open
to the world, expressive, 
humane and empathetic,
with a vibrant heart 
to celebrate a soul.

Or in my home.

Built of friendship and
commitment to all the
compromises we make
to one another with 
joyous faith, even with
all our mistakes, we make
our daily gifts to love, 
to the bones of home,
the chores and renovations,
the corners and textures,
the echos, the spice
of time together. Our
shared and single spot,
our frame through which we 
watch as seasons pass.

Or in my work.

And in the gifts I give
of time, the systems and
spaces I create for learners,
children and adults, the bits
of self I leave behind me,
the sparks and structures,
the architecture of learning, 
the tools we sharpen 
together and pass down.
The ideas I go to war against,
the ideas I stand beside. 
Promises to the world
I will one day leave behind.

Or on the page.

An assembly, a chorus
of the thoughts that pass and
matter, a collection,
selected along a path, 
a song of self, an epitaph.
scratched in ink, tapped out
into the world. My best guess
at meaning, or at least
a willingness to notice.

Poem: October 22, 2019

Early Humans

I like kids when they are excited
to tell you about who they are and
what they are working at. Some
kid comes racing across the room
waving a paper full of finger paint
or clutching a bunch of popsicle
sticks, and so ready for you to know
what their last fifteen minutes have
looked like that they can barely get
the words out in the right order,
and you know they are feeling their
oats, that you are the audience of
a great and revelatory act, evidence
of genius, a world-altering first
performance. Imagine what that
little brain is doing. Imagine the
electricity surging and the new
paths being trampled open. A tiny
mad scientist raises her fists up to
the sky, flush with the power of
creation, daring the universe to
look away, daring the world to
find fault, certain that her gifts,
rising so naturally from within her
cannot possibly have any limitations.

Poem: October 21, 2019

Step Up

There is always more
that could be done,
forces we could muster,
fights we could fight,
our own feet out there
on the pavement, and
our own hands wiping
away injustice, pollution,
hunger, anger, pain. We
are not victims, after all.
We are not without a
sense of right and wrong,
without determination.
Even at home or work,
in our own back yards,
we see what is broken.
We know what isn't
working. We have pens
that make lists. We have
hammers and wrenches
and buckets of paint.
And we can read more
books and mend more
fences and give up our
plastics and opioids. And
we can plant new trees.
We can hit the gym and
learn a language and be
better about eating clean
meals that we prepare.
And we can love more
fervently and always
kiss each other goodbye
and bake the neighbors
fresh cookies and serve
on local boards and
start saving for retirement
and spend more time
in the outdoors and write
letters to the editor and
vote in city elections and
write poems on the sly
and pray for those less
fortunate and finally
organize the photos and
put away the summer
clothes and sing and draw
and save the whales and
this is what we do with
all our time until we die.

Poem: October 20, 2019

Mmmmmmmmmmmm

Isn't it just like candy in your mouth,
those moments when you get to read
aloud- a story at bedtime, a part in
the class play, a poem to yourself,
some paragraph on repeat to anyone
who'll listen. The assonance and
alliteration. The onomatopoeia. Just
words, sweet with feeling, sticky
with meaning, made ours in the
timber of our voices, in the furnace
of our mouths. Words we suck on,
or crack between our teeth, or press
against our cheeks and leave to fade.
A performance, really. Life created,
born of reading, bubbling in the mind
and delivered into the world in airy
whispers and fleshy roars. Shaped in
our bellows, pulled like taffy, the
intimate work of tongue and vocal
chords. The salt of words. The tart
of words. The chewiness and crunch
of words. The sugary slurping of
words unwrapped from their pages
and consumed by the handful, laid
out in bowls for everyone to share.

Poem: October 19, 2019

Connecting...

We spend most days in scattered states,
and with stumbling steps communicate

in asynchronous bursts of partial thought.
More than we need and less than we ought.

The ragged filters within our brains
struggle hopelessly to arrange

the detritus of our converging streams-
the news feeds and the online memes,

the listicles and the strange anecdotes,
the podcasts, texts, and tweeted quotes,

conversations we had a work,
an insight from a checkout clerk-

all the force of these tributaries
have long since drowned our brains' canaries.

And still the smart phones in our hands
are sending out their bright commands.

With every red dot, ping, or buzz,
we lose our grasp on what just was.

Our conversations, then, become
a broken trail formed of crumbs.

A trail most likely left unfollowed.
A muddy pit in which we've wallowed.

Nothing settled or discerned.
Nothing finished. Nothing learned.

Poem: October 18, 2019

Feeling It

Feeling sharp and bright
as honeycrisp, like myself
at twenty in hiking boots
and oversized sweaters-
bold colors, primal patterns,
careless and scuff-kneed,
and with half a mind to
climb up into the crooked
arms of the dogwood tree,
ringed as I would be among
the bright red leaves, and
with the booming voice
of pep rallies and tailgates,
with the thumping of drums,
to proclaim and praise that
which is temporary, now,
immediately in this season.
This palette of maple, oak,
and birch, these embers,
the sweet abundance of
cider and pumpkins stacked
like wood in the market,
the shortened day, the angle
of the sun, the ticking down
of football Saturdays, the
shortening of shadows and
falling away of degrees, the
closing up of doors, the slow
collapse of Jack-O-Lanterns.
How beautifully we say our
goodbyes amid all of this
passing. How much there is
to love and lose, to watch
drifting past us, a great and
fading reception line. How
rich our sudden texture, how
alert our senses at Goodbye,
Goodbye, Goodbye.

Poem: October 17, 2019

Misdirection

It's a classic case of denial, I guess.
There are too many places to see
ourselves, and so I don't. I find a
picture of you and I, even the old
ones in which I recognize an echo
of myself, and you are the subject
I study, even when I am right there,
arm around you, I'm not. And when
I am projected live, big as life, in
some online meeting, the mirror of
myself up and juxtaposed to other
screens, I do not see me, so much
as a strange outline of me in the
clothing I remember I put on today,
a grey icon, anonymous, though I
still hear and love my own voice.
Even confronted with a bathroom
mirror, brushing my teeth, shaving
my face, I see only the one tooth,
the one patch of unlathered skin
as though I am merely peripheral,
a shadow, a foggy half-suggestion.
Otherwise, I am confronted with a
stranger in my house, a character
from a different story, another poem.

Poem: October 16, 2019

Beer Bread

Simple is good
and where we come back.

Mix the dry ingredients,
clicking through the sifter.

A white-soft mound of
flour, soda, salt, sugar.

The empty surfaces of
work. Nothing ornamental.

Glass bowl. Stir in the beer,
turning from foam to dough,

and roll it into a loaf pan,
pour over the melted butter.

Bake for an hour in this
yeasty glow, and you know,

you'll smell the gold and
there you go. No grace notes

no riff, just straight melody
and nothing to improve upon.

Poem: October 15, 2019

Chaotic Good

I need enough room to be chaotic,
to hop about in strange hats, to
sizzle and pop, to bounce like one
of those super balls between the
walls of what's possible, and even
so, there should be the chance of
an open window and time to get
lost and roll down the street amid
a world of strange, rapidly-firing
stimuli that I stick to and let go.

I need big stacks of blank pages
and multi-colored erasable pens
and things to shape between my
hands and things to break and
make whole again, and forces to
tame and rules to bend, and safe
places to quickly fall down and
unphased, stand up boldly again.

I need a pass on the laws of time
and space. Permission to walk
away. Permission to come back.
An open landscape in which to pace
without rhythm or well-worn path.
And a surprising lack of limits,
definitions, expectations. Swirling
autonomy that would cause some to
have panic attacks, and that others
might fold their arms at. I'm talking
too much freedom. An unmonitored
and overly-equipped laboratory,
a weirdly-resourced playground in
which to perform my reckless magic.

Poem: October 14, 2019

To My Children

I wish for you a world as real

as the ones you find in books,

in which even boredom serves

its purpose and pain and loss

are overcome. I wish you a life

in which you can be heroic and

vital, charming and well-loved,

in which journeys are important

and oceans can be crossed, and

dragons are slayable, and truths

are knowable. I wish that your

world is filled with people who

are worth knowing and fights

that are worth having. That 

doors open and lead you into

the places that need your help.

That your friends are loyal and

your shaken faith can be restored.

I wish you a world you can't put

down, a world you return to 

and hold in your devoted hands.

Poem: October 13, 2019

Sundays in October

On Sundays in October we find
a particular form of surrender.

We surrender to the cold blowing
of the leaves, the wind dragging

its extra burden through the street.
We give in to the heavy, grey clouds

and the early darkness, and the weight
of full, cold raindrops. We fall

into our houses, our eyelids half-lifted,
half pulled down against it all.

We fall into our warm lit spaces and let
October cover us at dusk like a blanket.

Poem: October 12, 2019

Heavy. Invisible.

What could we want
that could ever satisfy?

Love? Sex? Wealth?
Exceptional health?

Even vague longings
lose their flavor, fade.

Having is nothing,
a subtraction, even.

While life is the long
tangling of ourselves

With what is not
ourselves, but which

is different, new, and
therefore, pleasing

until it is pressed so
closely to our chest

that it is forgotten,
invisible, and lost.

Life is our own slow
sticky accumulation.

And wisdom is an
impossible unraveling.

Poem: October 11, 2019

Cruising

Over lunch, we determine
that after fifteen years, we
are pretty good at marriage.

After all, the drifting we do
in and out of our lanes, in
the traffic of our lives is

casual- windows down and
radio up, and headed out in
the same general direction.

No need to speed, no stress
if we temporarily lose sight
of one another. Nothing is

bumper to bumper. You'll
slow down or I'll catch up
when we need to be found.

Both of us content to admire
each other's journey. Both
of us happy to check in as

we wander toward a shared
destination. Both of us out
exploring the same map.

And if I'm lucky (and I am),
I pull up next to you and rev
my engine at the light, or

I find you idling, top down
and feet on the dash, waiting
where I pull over for the night.

Poem: October 10, 2019

Recovery

A pause
and suddenly
a well-established
habit becomes
physically difficult.

Wait long enough
and the pen hovers
just centimeters
above the page,
but far enough,
far enough and
stiffened against
filling the distance,

as if consequence
necessarily follows
action, as if
anything has
any kind of
substance.

Poem: October 9, 2019

Hell Is Other People

Our houses have become bunkers, places
that are at least not out there, quiet vaults
with doors we can close, end points to
which our traffic flows, where we still
control the pace and volume and VOLUME
of our input, where we can decide that all
the terrible things that they are saying are
not being said here in the one place we can
maybe not have to touch anyone, where
we can maybe finish one goddamn thought,
or not have any thoughts at all, and isn't
it strange that people used to gather in bars,
used to accumulate in malls, used to head
out on purpose to find one another in their
churches and social clubs as if, as if it took
a village, as if other people had anything
to offer other than a disappointing world
view, a viral bit of nothing new to pass
around, or a thrust of righteous anger at
the river of human filth that we wade in
every day. No. Better to have the bunker
and its walls. Better to have an off switch,
a mute button, voice mail, windows we
can lock, climate control. A place we call
our own. Nice, but don't expect an invitation.

Poem: October 8, 2019

Ode to My Son

Quick and clever and easily
the funniest person I know,
I delight in you when you
arch your eyebrows, cock
your head sideways, and
observe just how absurd we
all are. You have a charming
way of laying out the facts,
of never letting anything
seem so serious, so essential
it merits an angry response.
I like how you live your life
so imprecisely, how you
seem to paint with a sloppy
brush, how you smile and
open your eyes wide at the
ironies, the small human
delights, and I like the
impressionistic distances
you create, blurring over
the things I find rigid and
delineated, softening your
focus until even sharp edges
and dark storm fronts are
only shading in a broader
picture. All your life, you
have caused me to cheer for
your unfocusing, for your
power to remain undefined.
In you, I see the warmest
impulse, the healing brush,
the impossible wisdom of
perspective, the exception to
all the unconscionable rules.

Poem: October 7, 2019

Making Peace with the Passing On of My Denim Jacket

It is some form of foolishness, I suppose, to linger
over things, to not pass them on to the people we
love, or who claim to have greater use for them.

Your daughter wants your denim jacket, the one
that reminds you of a particular version of you, a
relic of something unrealized, the fabric of a dream,

and honestly it's probably more flattering that she
likes something that is yours, that carries some echo
you enjoy, and of course, it's a point of contact, a

shared toy, a game of keep away in which you still
have some say in the outcome, some control over
the game clock and the scoreboard, a card to play,

and isn't it nice to imagine the day you give in and
pass this worn but sturdy talisman into the hands
of the next caretaker, the next keeper of the flame,

and shouldn't every interaction between a father
and his daughter be sacred, carry weight, isn't this
the wisdom of love- the handing over of one's self-

so such a gesture should be simple, right, even if
young people can't realize what it means to empty
our coat pockets, to allow our stories to trail away.

Young people don't see how little any of us have,
how one thing can stand for many, or how wasteful
we become when we finally get the thing we want.

But love is simple and without condition and greater
than our mythologies, and denim tells the stories it
will tell, and we only learn lessons we need to learn.

Poem: October 6, 2019

Waking Up in a Tent

Quiet all night and dark.

And cooler than we keep

the house. And, of course,

all noises- the wind and

leaves, footsteps in gravel, 

rain at three AM- and the

absence of other noises- 

the electric hum of our

house, the opening and

shutting of doors, traffic-

until a little after seven 

and the beginning light as

it filters through the blue

walls of the tent and the 

strange immediacy of 

someone's voice on the 

other side, and first one, 

then many dogs barking

and car doors and tires, 

the slow rolling out to find

firewood, coffee. A whistle

of tents unzippering, the

lighting of stoves and wood

fires, cracks, the thunk of

an axe in the distance, then

conversations, the crescendo

of a campground, all of the

sounds born from sunlight.

Poem: October 5, 2019

Fish Stories

Sometimes I let them go. Sometimes when I am
waiting on the banks of my desk, my mental line
casting out into the muddy spaces, I suddenly feel
a tug on the slack, and something bobs on either
side of my consciousness. Quick. Nothing more
than a word or a phrase. Less even. The shadow
suggested by a word. And in that moment, I know
that, if I start cranking, I can follow that hint, that
intuition until it is tired and lying dead on the page,
flat as a metaphor and ready to be skinned. And
part of me will dine upon it. And part of me will
hang it on the wall. And the rest of me will start
to tell the story, revising as I go, because we all
like the ones we fought for the most. We all like
to think of the work as so hard and our efforts so
impressive, but the interesting poems are the ones
we let go. The interesting poems are still shadows.

Poem: October 4, 2019

Definitions

Sophia is a cheerleader, but
not only a cheerleader since
she is also a dancer, and a
singer in the choir, and an
actress from time to time.

And on Sundays, she is an
artist. And on weekdays,
she is a student, but not just
a student, a particular kind
of student, an honors student
full of projects and heavy books.

And now that she is eleven,
she is a friend within a shifting
group of friends, so she can
be one person's best friend or
five peoples' best friend, and
also her clothes have hidden
meanings that she has decoded,
and which are subject to change,

as is her opinion of me, it
seems, especially in the evenings,
when she is a queen, and I must
observe a list of unwritten
protocols that also shift, so there
is no point in a person writing
them down, and sometimes

she decides she's a failure, and
sometimes she decides she's
the best. All of these definitions
to wear like costumes and to
carry like crosses, to connect
like dots and be lost in like maps.

But I see her there. She's there.
She's Sophia and she is there.

Poem: October 3, 2019

I Clean My Glasses Before I Write

I clean my glasses before I write;
not that there is so much outward
to see, as much as my imagination,
my inner conversation, my echoing
voice is strangely tied to my eyes
and to the hard surfaces I can define
and that remind me of other hard
surfaces in other lives, backward
surfaces and forward surfaces, and
so I need my eyes to make what is
out of reach, concrete, to help me
recognize the metaphors of stone
and leather, chasm and cloud line,
dancing shadow and crashing wave.

Poem: October 2, 2019

Rankings

I love you more than Sharpie pens,
and I love you more than whiskey.

I'd let go all my gadgets- my iPad,
iPhone and Apple watch and Mac-
if given just the five of you, I was
forced to only pick the one.

You're better by far than snack mix
and jambalaya and filet mignon.

I could turn my back every Saturday
on Notre Dame football, but I
could never turn my back on you.

I love you more than music. All
of it- Rock, Country, Opera, Rap.

You are more attractive than
a microphone, more compelling
than the sound of my own voice.

Given the choice, I'd choose you
over Netflix and Hulu and NPR.

In a list of all the cool things that
can be admired- among monkeys
and pirates and robots and ninjas,
I have to say you rank number one.

I love you more than backpacks
and my Leatherman multi-tool and
my Disney pins and Mickey ears
and even my band-collared shirt.

To me, you are the finest thing going.
You exceed nearly all else on Earth.

Poem: October 1, 2019

Falling

October, and in some ways
I suppose I am in the October
of life, which is to say, vibrant
and changing colors and so
ready for a homecoming, keen
to gather with you, together
against cold winds, always
back here around the bonfire,
always wrapped in wool and
denim, always whiskey, always
the flickering contrasts, the
hard and visible breaths, and
always the skittering, the dry,
sharp noises, the piles of it.
And I love you, world that runs
and falls. And I love you, world
that dies away. And I love you,
world that stays, and in its red
remaining, is sweet as pumpkin
flesh, rough as bark, orange
like sugar maple leaves.