The Good Seasons

These are your rewards for
not giving into
impatience
hatred
and despair:

the good seasons. One in which
to make reparations
preparations
and repair. That old red-handled
hammer of which we spoke
now firmly in your fist
you won't mind
how your hand
and your arm ache
from striking blow after
blow after blow
you will just keep on standing
in front of the thing you made
with satisfaction
and great pleasure
and well-being
so simple
in your moment.

Another in which
to root
and to bloom. No one can
predict or say
how large
or which color
or whether you will be the
hedgerow, and border plantings
or the morning glories
climbing up
and running riot
and summoning hummingbirds
to drink, and to worship. You won't
care, and it won't matter. That
will be the whole point.

And another
to speak silent prayers
on your lips
and touch your fingertips
to the very tops
of tall grasses
and flowers
and other people's fingertips
that you love
and to be stock-still in fogged and misty mornings
waiting for the sun
and then the excited dance
and the burning off
and the glory
of a blue sky day
and you will cry then
overwhelmed with
the thickness
and density
of pure abundance
face raised
eyes closed
seeing the honeycombed
reds and oranges and
with the joy
of a sinking sun
and the smells of wet leaves
and woodsmoke

one last rose
so pink
or white
so late
on the vine

and of having had
the good seasons

all of this
for you
poised
and yet to come.

Essex County

Here are the fields
just tilled
and dormant
under a weak sun. It isn't
the break of day
or dusk
or even midday
only unremarkable
midmorning.

How can it ever be that
this brown slab will
be so lush
and dense
and fertile
and green
and singing
with crickets
and flashing
with fireflies
on a warm June night?

I cannot decide
what needs to be sown
and what to
patiently wait for
to emerge.

The robins know
they triple hop and
cock their heads
and pause
to listen underneath

what will be

their bright and
rusty red breasts
flashing signals
of hope
and beginning.

Change

A pale pink house
with large windows
and small scrub pines
all alone
on a tiny rise of
solid ground
in the great salt marsh. No one
has lived there
for years
I don't know the story
although someone does.

All the channels
full and level
with the grasses
at high tide. The first time
since the new year
there is more water
than ice. Spring
forcing open
winter's fist.

That house
in the most precarious
of places
and yet
everytime I see it
I want it
to move in
scrub floors
with something
lemon-scented
windows open
for airing
lights back on
bare bulbs only
a few pots, and pans, and
a thrumming 1950's fridge
a big rug
an old couch
everyone come to gather
and drink
and laugh
music drifting over the marsh

the snowy owl
and bittern
silent in the shadows and grasses
unsure
of the new neighbors.

Interpretation

In my mind
during sleep
the night
before last

I am searching
for the dog I lost
in the winter woods
calling everywhere
and running the banks
deep with snow
curling like a full lip
over the dark and fast river
which slides itself
so fluid
around slick black rocks
and a pressured tangle of roots
and branches
and the occasional man-made jewel
of a bobber, or sand-filled plastic bottle, or the
red ring
of a milk cap

the river pulls down at
the interruptions
then rises
and my voice falls away in the gorge
no long reaches here
to hold it

what does it all mean
something lost
a fruitless search
static barrier banks of snow
so hard to move through
in absolute proximity
to facile movement, and ease
though this too inaccessible
in its cold
and slippery
and snarled way

am I the lost
or the seeker
the barrier
the voiceless
or the bright red ring

maybe it means something
the dream itself
a puzzle
with wisdom
as its prize
maybe nothing
just a feel
and a vision
unrelated artifacts
self-germinated
sleeping entertainment

and maybe
it is none of these
symbols
outliers
meanings
and distractions

it is
just the dog itself
sensible enough
to leave
after too much time
in an inhospitable
and narrow place
and find a way home
to a warm bed
and food
and the surprised and
affectionate voices
the gentle touches

of welcome home.

Comment

Prreeeeeeachy. Awful, hate it.

Pfffffffffffffffft.

Flip

I'm going to tell you a little
something about your problem about the way
you take it all a little lightly about the way you
write it out and speak it out and do it all the time I'm going
to tell you there's a hole in your method I'm going to
point it out to you that you are in that dream you are back in
your high school and you are not in your pants and
they're all pointing and
they're all laughing and you can't
be invincible and bullet-proof just by jumping the
gun and beating them to the
punch and the thing is that we can see it
instantly you are making worse than a
fool of yourself you are making a
mockery of what you know and what you are and
that's not satire and that's not comedy and
that's not ballsy and brave that's a
tragic waste of the honest truth that's selling short what
there really is to say that's selling out so that when you
have that chance that moment that time to really say it speak it
be it know it do it feel it you will find yourself without
your voice having worn it out singing ninety-nine
bottles of beer on the wall into the wind and no one was
surprised by ending we all know how it goes and now there you
are with no voice and having painted yourself nicely in this
corner and now the threshold and your audience is way over there
don't risk it don't do it don't
leave it in the margins don't leave it for later get to
work get to work and
say what you know.

Funny

Everything is funny today. I don't know why. It just is.

You Were Little

To the still point
and become small again I am
down on my knees and you are
here and I bring you to me where you
were going to be and be there for
long and be there for the
back and forth and be there for the
nothing else just the this and the
still point and the
wave after wave after wave and
I am stroking your cheek and I am
all the falling leaves and I am the time
you saw the black branches and the crow in
the sky before the snow came and I am whispering a
song to you about the heart of the sea and the
thing that you love and the old oak trees and
be here for this and I will hold you to me and
this is the still point this is the time

you are so small again and
you dissolve and we
disappear and all that is left
is the way the rocks stay warm when the
sun goes down and the
call of that crow
see that
feel that
you are
come to me.

Untitled

I was
participating
in the early morning
office small talk
who is in
and who is out today
everyone hates
the new billing software
and will they let you expense
the cigarette lighter
converter thingys
for the portable printers

and I had this flash
of an image
of walking through a room
in a towel
out the door
barefoot
and down three steps
onto the grass
and in the dark
the length of the dock
drop the towel
a pause
and a stretch
one hand down
a small hop
and in
now rippling moonlight
away from me
and then
all the way in
water
and skin

why these flashes
the lightning rod of this
making conduit
to that
I do not know.

Love Letter

Its so stupid
to have that
klatch conversation
about your heartbreaks.

You're lucky
if you ever got your heart
properly destroyed
a greenstick break
straight through
uncomplicated healing
knit together
and they wrote that line for you:

stronger at the broken places

for the rest of us
with a stake
and perhaps
culpability
in the making
of the wreckage

rending
tearing
cachectic wasting and
gangrenous rot

for the rest of us
imperfect healing
wounds to be packed and drained
debridement of foul tissues
wet bandaging

the whole
stinking
mess

no linear progression
towards wellness here and
on your downest day
you understand something
in the logic of
amputation
and burning

it takes something
to endure the healing
knowing the result will be
your stump
or nub
divot
and scar

the klatch conversation
you're having
over lattes
at Starbucks
about your heartbreaks
and their
healing
I can't relate
I am over here
in this church basement
with a motley
support group
we don't even
like each other
we're just here
in the bad fluorescent lighting
unable to help
but burden
each other with
the long
and agonizing
and painful stories

of reconstruction.

Untitled

I bought
pink and dark pink
fat tulips
for you

their rubbery stems and leaves
evolved to survive
coldest spring
intrigue me

and I love
something pretty
and to surprise you

they're for you
but when you leave
to go to work
I will stare at them
and lace my fingers
in the leaves
wanting to hear
that hollowy sound
then slowly draw
the fattest
and pinkest one
across my cheek

wipe the drops up
from the table
you'll never know
of my affair.

Horror Show

Worst death I've attended today. Very awful. Oh that was bad.

It was so bad I dry heaved. I dry heaved at the bedside. Fortunately not in front of the family, facility staff, or that the patient would notice, but still. I didn't think I could still dry heave. That there was anything left that could make me do that anymore. Guess what. Found it.

Its going to take People magazine *and* Us Weekly to come down tonight from that one.

Bad.

The Poet Has An Off Day

I'm not anything
today

a half-shiny penny
beckoning
at the sandy curb
I did not
pick it up

not only a dead rat
but also a dead squirrel
fetal on the sidewalk
born from the melted snow
I did not
find meaning

three cousins
side by side by side
in a triple stroller
with peaked hats
and holding hands
camera in my pocket
I did not
take the picture

a bad cold
too much work
sick children
too much winter
bought the wrong toothpaste
again
none of it
suffices to explain
this debacle

I will stand
in my corner
until my punishment
is done.

Untitled

At the very end
of all things
after searching
my heart and looking
for you everywhere there

was a feeling like
sliding between two
fingers a big fat country
blade of grass wet
from the rain that
just fell just you
just you
in the field the
grass gone high
and quiet crickets and a
cooler air you
slide the water down and off
the blade while looking at your
now wet hand you could
lick that water right off and
drink it
shhhhhhhhhhhh
you are all alone in this and
then you turn to
go and your hand is wet with rain and
you are sad and not sad and
its the end of all things and
you turn to go and
at that moment
a deer comes and she is so red and
so looking back at you and it
all falls apart
here
at the end of all things
you thought you knew you
thought this was your moment
to turn
and to go
and there she is and its the everywhere searching
back for you and it
found you even though
you were on your way out even
though you thought it was time to
go even though you came to the
end of a blade and it was
water and skin

search my heart again and
don't leave
never leave you
don't know why and you will
always turn to go and at the end of all things its
not the end its a moment
just a moment
with a rain just gone and a deer just come to
have a look at you I will
be here
in the field
with a blade
of country grass.

Untitled

Everything
will leave you
in the end. Don't bother
to wonder if
you're alone
because you are. Revel in
your unconscious life and
test out
the many truths:
The notch in your belt
worn smooth
where you once were
those squared and washed out and
poorly shot pictures from
thirty years ago
that was
you
and
the house
you grew up in
always smaller
than you remember
but there it is.

Everyday
its there
all the days
that become years
that you don't think of it
even once. It isn't
gone away
or never was
just because
you don't
call it to mind

or need it
anymore.

February

Two days of thaw
and the ice margins retreat. There
a little mulch and
there
the rooted skirts of
all the trees
showing
the earth again. But the
ice is hard
and slippery
and dirty
and emerging everywhere
like horrible Easter eggs
piles of dog shit
some whole
some slurried
every shade of brown
you can imagine. You wake
in the dark
and feel heavy
and think
how can it be
all so unkind
and for so long?

The last time
you really had fun.
The last time
you could go
anywhere you pleased
and on a bicycle.
The last time
you weren't
working at it.

Not even
bottom of the ninth now
only the top.
And yet.
Pitchers
and catchers
are arranging
for someone to water the plants
and check the house
while they're away. You there
in the batter's box
be prepared
to answer:

what do you want?
what do you want?

None of the rest matters.
Only this.

You Got Screwed

She
pulled her hair back in
a loose
ponytail she missed
a few strands
looping in a long
waving spiral
along her cheek
and at the nape of
her neck she was busily
doing
unaware and
her hands moved
steadily quiet
confidence and assured and
concentrating humming
and
yes
happy and
yes
enjoying herself and
occupied and
making and thinking of
something makes her smile a
little smile
concentrating on and
thinking of amused and content and
pleased and fluid and at
so much ease
she
uses the back of her pretty wrist
to brush the pretty strands
back from her pretty brow
she
looks up out the
window she notices the light the
smell of the evening air she
knows what kind of bird sings that everything she
likes it she loves it she sees
it and she takes the
time she pays
attention and listens and
knows and she is interested and
delighted and she is
honestly and genuinely and
open to it and up for it and she gives it and she
owns it and sweetly and gently and
she keeps
it to herself and she is
quiet in her way and she lets it go and
lets it go
and lets it go
and lets it go

and she lets it go

and she
lets it go

and she pulls her hair back
in a loose ponytail and she
misses
a few strands she just
lets them go she is
quiet in her way she just

lets it go
will let it go
she is going
to let it go patient
and waiting and
willing and
letting it go and
and
and
she just
just does it
she lets it go
this one more
time.

The Riot Act

Quit your yearning
your longing
your pining
your wishing
and hoping
your turning around
and looking back over one shoulder
slowly
in the falling golden afternoon light
while wondering
who is watching you
doing that
with a yearning of their own

What is the nature of
your particular void
and what is the medium
you best like to fill it with
food, or drink, or
god help us all
attention

it is such
simple math
and the laws of
conservation of mass
don't apply here
get that?
you will never
fill your hole
and make a whole
that way

sit down
in your ordinary chair
at your ordinary table
on a Monday
at lunchtime
and eat a sandwich
and be pleased
to be there
and don't mind it
that no one is admiring
the slow way you
thoughtfully chew
the way your carefully touch
your fingers
to your brow
lost in
important thought
just eat the sandwich
the act of it
the sandwich
is enough.

Dead Bodies

Yesterday D. called to say that C., a mutual friend of ours, had gone to the home of one of his employees to check in on her because she hadn't shown up to work in a few days, answered her phone, or returned his messages. The landlord let him in. She was dead. She was 55 or so.

I have seen many dead bodies. Dead people. I was going to say a lot, but I don't know if I've seen more than the average American or not. Obviously, many in the hospice time period. A few during the working-in-the-hospital years. Those were kids, and a couple of babies, since the hospital where I worked was a children's hospital. And then the dead people you'd expect at the open-casket mourning events.

I have found four dead people in my life. Three in the line of duty, overdoses all, and one not. M. was first. She was addicted to heroin and pills and crystal meth and she had an explosive temper. I used to see her for individual psychotherapy and I always had to sit in a chair by the door with the door a little open. And three times over the course of a year I had to call 911 to have the cops remove her from the office for screaming and making threats and refusing to leave and throwing things. She once threw my stapler out the window and when I went to leave at the end of the day, having forgotten all about it, it was lying there, dead, on the hood of my car.

Anyway she was a high risk for accidental overdose and that's what happened. I got a call from her landlord in August about an odor. I went out, he let me in, and she was in bed, dead, vomit and pills visible in the vomit and the whole bit. She was 22 years old and she really hoped she was going to beat her addiction and have a happy life. She really believed in herself and her future. She used to write these long kind of 8th-grade-rhyme-y poems about that and show them to me. I gotta hang on/cuz I believe in me/and I'm gonna dream on/cuz there's so much for me to be. That kind of thing. I really liked her a lot. I was glad I was the one who found her because her whole family was awful and so was her boyfriend and so were her friends. Predators all. It doesn't matter that I was the one to find her but I'm still glad it was me. All things considered, we had a good relationship.

K. I only knew for a few weeks. Heroin. Another landlord call, no odor, but rent not paid and no answers to knocks and notes pushed under the door. Dead on his side on the kitchen floor, with bunches of old plastic grocery-store bags in each hand, and a used condom on the floor. All the lights on. A digital clock radio in every single room, in the hallway, in the bathroom too, and no furniture except an office chair, stolen from our office, and a futon mattress on the floor, with a sleeping bag, and a bunched-up flannel shirt for a pillow. I still think about the clocks. Why?

N. was a junky's junky. She would ingest anything, smoke anything, inject anything. She was 45 and had been living like that since she was 12 or so. It was a miracle she was still around. It caught up to her. I went to pick her up to take her to a routine physical, her first medical care in 10 years. It was her annual treatment plan goal. Increase self-care skills. The only thing she would agree to work on. N. will attend and complete a routine physical exam with E.'s assistance and accompaniment for support by xx/xx/xx. She lived in the worst rooming house in Lynn, which is saying a lot. Light St. The saddest and most violent pit of despair and human depravity I've seen. We always went there in pairs except for that day. I ran in by myself because the person who was going to go with me called out sick but it was a big day, her appointment day, and I didn't want to lose momentum with her. Her door was open and the TV was on and she was dead in bed. Not long dead either. As I was calling the police on my cell a guy walked in behind me with his pants off and sporting a giant erection. He walked right out when he saw me. That was her life. Door open, sex for drugs, 24/7. I stayed there until the cops came even though I was scared to be in that building. I did not want that guy coming back in and I bet he would have. That place was that bad. It was stupid and emotional of me to do that. I recognize that. But its what I did at that moment. It all turned out OK.

The fourth is the first dead person I ever saw, and that was in Kenya. I was staying with a family in Kibera, the big slum outside of Nairobi. They always had my homestay brother walk me to the matatu, crowded little bus, and pick me up to walk me home. I knew it was a dangerous place though I still can't say dangerous in exactly what way. Murder? Rape? Pickpocketing? Anyway.

One afternoon I got off the matatu and he wasn't there so I walked by myself. I was supposed to wait but I was 20 and American and naive and didn't. I got lost. I found a main-ish road and followed it and there were lots of people walking with me who looked OK so that felt OK to me. And then in front of me there was a naked, dead, Kenyan 40-ish looking guy lying face up in the street. And absolutely no one paused, stopped, or even looked at him. Involuntarily I stopped, and stared, and then I thought, get moving. Because that's what it was like the whole time I was on my own, more or less, in Kenya. Don't stand out, and do what everyone else is doing. So I walked by too. My homestay brother found me not too long after and I told my homestay family about it and they were really, really angry with me. I don't know if they were angry with me because they were scared I did that and that something could have happened to me, or if I somehow put them at risk. I don't know if they reported the body or not. I was too rattled by how angry they were to ask.

That Kenyan guy looked perfect. Clean and healthy-looking and no injuries anywhere I could see, and a pleasant expression on his face, eyes open, just gazing into the distance.

Valentine

If you are the keepers
of a kingdom
of leisure

or the thug
of the dungeon
of responsibilities

then
I am the
queen of pleasure
in the empire
of the senses
just as that song I sent
sang to you
did you close your eyes to hear
what she said

I am here to
set it on fire and watch your
slow burn
or
trip over my own
sweeping skirts

for one day only
I can't
be found

and for one day only
everytime you trace
your collarbone
with a finger
and slide it to rest
in the notch
at the hollow
of your throat

I will call together
all my subjects
to melt something slowly
on your tongue
to brush your cheeks
with my roses
and bring the flush
to kiss your open eyes
with the colors
and the unholy vision
you can't look away from

an inhale
and the exhale
and the sweet delight
of knowing
the gorgeous blood
thrumming
and coursing
oh your
wholly beautiful
hearts

I am ruling
with all my
temperamental fury
to breach the borders
and invade
your country
nevermind
what is sneaking up
behind me

I am always
being brought down
but not before this
golden age
drink the meade
with me and
spend the night at
my encampment
I will send you home
in the morning
with bread
and milk and honey
and the silken banners

of your native lands.

March

I looked in
through the damp and
dark-barked trees
cold spring come
the first sound
and smell
of dripping water and
the moss gone to green
and I saw her

continue
to keep her secrets
of the times
around the corners
and down the stairs
and of the nightdreams
and waiting daydreams
about
being visible
and of breaking
her own heart
as if
that were love
or a promise
or a way to
be full

go ahead
and kiss her
she still
doesn't know

fog and
a tiny mist
even the trees
now obscured
and slowly gone

but only
from sight.

Myth

The crush
of dirty winter cars
agonizing their way
in a curved and heaving coil
to the big city.
For what
I thought
behind my own wheel. I
watched myself
blink and excuse myself
to the shoulder
and get out
and wade into
the deep snow
in a little basin
with one crabapple tree
by an onramp. My
mother is dead
and I have just gotten the call
and I stand here
and look at humanity
unaware
passing by
the weak February sun
making glare
and trouble.

She isn't dead. No call came.
I did not get out
or wade in
or step back
and watch
from a transformed place.
I am in this too. None of us
are mindless and
none of us
are the crush of
humanity and
it takes
much less than
death
real
or imagined
to know it.

Touch the bark
of the crabapple tree.

We all
know exactly
what it feels like.

The Hospice Worker Goes to Laptop Training

Nothing died today
nothing
in front of me
anyway
You get so you
don't think that matters
but a little bit
it does
Three times today I heard
that song
about the day
the music died
and at the bar
the guy
at the open mike
played it again
and sang Peggy Sue
it must be
some anniversary
of some crash
and legends
before they were legends
lost today
we said
the friend and I
to each other

today
not one of my patients died
and there was not one crash
on the untreated roads
in all of
snow-storming Massachusetts
and the seamonkeys
survived the cat
one more day
and the friend
was discharged home
not dead
and with a good story
and the other friend
I was sitting with
found her sense
of the absurd
and did not
die anymore
inside herself

and then the guy
at the open mike
played Tupelo Honey
so slow
so nice
so much so
I had to
put my hand on
the friend's hand
bow my head
to listen
and smile
for a minute

today was
one good day
and that is
what I thought
on the slippery road
driving home
if I crash
and I die
this was a day
I could end on.

Life on a Train

I see you
in the frames
flashing by.
See the rounded hill
it was west, somewhere
dry and golden grass
nothing near
what was I doing there
and when was it
but I see it
so clearly
this long shadow
from the train
like a stencil
stretching up
but not spilling over
that smooth hill and
it was chilly
about to be cold
the day
was ending
and it was
lonely there
but that
flashing shadow
I could not stop watching
flash flash
black gold
there you were
glimpses
between the frames
and I knew
look there
all the time
all the trains
the things
that flash by
watch them
you will see
you will shiver
and even
feel that empty
and lonely feel
but wait for me
and watch for me
you will see.

New Router

Back in business. Thank you MD.