Poem: April 3, 2019

Water Flows

Your new tattoo says Water Flows,
an Atwood quote of which you are fond,
and a truism, I joke, since one might
just as easily have said Water is Wet,
and yet I understand your meaning,
your intention to go forward, to go
where you want, surely, through or
over or around. You are calling on
old gods, using sympathetic magic
and ink, calling up your own power
not to be sunk, but to, in fact, sink
the obstacles foolish enough to place
themselves in the path of your slow
and patient and terrible force, your flow.
And who am I if not the stone placed
steadfast and stubborn at the center
of your river, the foolish and worn
optimist who tries to divide or redirect,
caught up in awe of all of your moving?

Poem: April 2, 2019

Accumulation

It seems however many shelves I build,
I blink my eyes, and they are filled.

So many possessions are content to hide
until a new cabinet makes them rise like a tide.

Easier to keep things than to cast them away.
We pack attics and basements day after day

so that year upon year our lives creep and expand,
and we fill all the spaces that we have on hand.

Poem: April 1, 2019

April's Fool

I like to dance at the edges of mistakes
and to play with tools instead of toys,
to find joy in some potential foolishness
and in the limits of what I can or cannot
reasonably predict. Give me a trial by
fire any day of the week, some situation
in which I know enough, as they say,
to be dangerous. I'm game to give it a go.
Nothing could please me more than to
take on some project with missing pieces,
to improvise with the tools I have instead
of the right tool for the job, or to have
to imagine the four or five critical steps
that have been left out of the instructions.
Anyone can cook a meal at times that
the pantry is full and the recipe tested.
I prefer the mystery of unimagined meals
and the chance to see if anything burns.

Poem: March 31, 2019

Trying to Look Busy

It isn't fair, I know, that I ask you
to keep track of time, the details,
the scheduling of our lives. Or that
I tease you that we are always late.

We live busy lives, and some things
are bound to fall through the cracks.
We are late for the art show or miss
some deadline, and you take the blame.

While it must appear that I'm muddling through,
a passenger in your car, another child to herd
out the door, one more detail to be managed.
You've mentioned that I can seem oblivious.

And, truly, some details fait to occur
to me as having the importance you seem
to have assigned them: What on earth are you
wearing? Why hasn't the homework been done?

But I managed, I managed to get along
with very little crashing down upon me
before we took our vows to one another
and even now I tend to other details,

such as the keeping of our poetic history
and the stoking of our metaphorical fires.
I am cultivating our creative spaces, and
filling the pantry we use to feed our souls.

Poem: March 30, 2019

Secret Identity

These days I spot myself in the mirror-
doughy and gray, pale from days spent
at a desk, arranging names or numbers
into tables or creating "Save-the-Dates"-
and in these reflected moments I see
how I have faded from the page, become
scratched with age like a vinyl record,
and, of course, there is something to be
mourned, a kid who was never quite
captured properly in the photos that
my children pull out of the shoebox
marked College, the pictures they hold
up and ask, "What is going on here?"
And I know how foolish it would seem
to even imply that I wished those pictures
were my reflection, or maybe not those,
but the one that should have been taken,
that I am sure could have existed of a kid
with energy like fire and a careless
sense of style- such long, perfect hair,
jeans ripped at the knee, worn red
Chuck Taylor high tops and vintage
glasses with wire rims, arms full of books,
the casual scratch of a Zippo and flick
of a cigarette. The kind of wiry kid
who lives at ease in the dark of barrooms
and in the brilliant light of college greens.
The kind of kid who could really ache
and radiate, who prickled with charm
and the confidence of potential energy.
It's the reflection I still half-expect to see
before my eyes come into stark focus,
and I find the me my children see.

Poem: March 29, 2019

Directions

Suppose you wanted to go from here
to, say, Boulder or Boston, somewhere
far away, or hell, pick a place nearby,
someone's new house in an unfamiliar
neighborhood, in a different part of town.
These days, the exercise is simple enough-
some form of GPS connected by Bluetooth
to your vehicle's entertainment system-
In 300 feet, turn left. Drive for forty
point two miles. Take exit twenty-six
on the right. You have arrived at your
destination. And something may have been
lost along the way with no map to invite
questions, no compass to make a steadfast
promise, no stranger to lend a hand.

Poem: March 28, 2019

Listen

If it's real it has its own music
almost as solid as itself:
the cracking of sticks across your knee,
the swish of leaves, the warm call
of a cardinal in spring,
and the creak of this old chair,
as solid as a hundred years, or
the stroke and scratch of pen on paper.
I can close my eyes and I feel
the echoes of fingers forming chords
on guitar strings, of other fingers
pulling in plucked patterns, and the hum
that fills the hollow belly. And at night,
your heartbeat stomping beneath
your skin, the intake of your breath,
the clock's rhythm stepping, always,
like someone in another room.