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The aphids
will drink dry
your pretty porch plants
and turn them brown
before August
or the vacation
with the forgetful neighbors
in charge of your living things
while you are
what are you?
away
get the chance.

Are you
pretty inside? are you
lovely are you
in love with a
humid night and a
hand in your hand saying

you'd better let me
lead you down it
can be a
little tricky here?

I'm not talking about if
your glass is
half empty
of half full

only if you are thirsty.

The 50 Year Anniversary

Doris "DD" Geoffrey
married Phil Derrico
in 1958.

You can't know
your seagoing ways
you can't
you can't know them at all.

I put in
at a likely spot
with a mossy mouth opening to
dark water and brown-edged
blossoms dripping from the
overhanging trees moving and
proving
there's some current here

how can I know
which tributary I chose if I will
come finally
to a delta
the opening
the shiny sea
of which
I know we know
we dream

or instead
narrow and
dwindle and dry up
in a sandy plain
with no trace
that I was here at all?

I cannot live
without water
without swells
without lapping
can you
did Doris
did Phil?

have to leave
this wooden old canoe
in a swampy
and then just muddy woods
with the twigs snapping
and biting
and hurting
our bare feet

and live as pure
land mammals

and live like
the damned.

What You Should Do

You know
what it is and
how it is
between us

You know
what you're
afraid of
the most

it is not
death
or impotence
or being contacted
by the
New Yorker
to publish

those are nice and
thrilling fantasies I have a
number of nice fantasies too

you know
how we're
always hugging + kissing

how we're
touching the back
of each other's necks

and its comfortable

how we're
making this much
eye contact

how its
cake and wine

how its always
no no no no no

and then

yes yes yes yes yes.

Cape Cod

The worst boyfriend I ever had
dumped me
in a sad little
beachside bar
at 2:30am
on the fourth
of July

before that
he drew funny little pictures
on my palms

and let me
cut his hair
with my keychain scissors
one afternoon picnic

and I remember
in particular
the feel of the powdery
and nearly purple
sand I rubbed
between my feet
leaning back
with my elbows up
on old driftwood
his tongue so
warm and sweet
in my mouth

and then of course the
stick of his leaving steps
on the beer-tacky
concrete floor

and from the door
his shape
against one last firework

before anything was complicated
before anything was lost

before worst was

times like these.

The Greatest Show on Earth

my god

do you recall when
we went to the circus and
what the pole looked like with
the two strongmen
holding either end of it

the bright light on it
lighting it up
beige and backlit
like skin under a
medical lamp

and the dust sloughing off in
little puffs as she
in bare feet
goes bounce and bounce and

once
twice
three times

that's my pole and
you're on it and I am barefoot and
jumping and maybe you
are crouching and
holding on for
dear life and I am
leaping
bouncing

higher higher higher

and right up
and over you

my god

up I go.

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Something is coming
for both of us and

I know there will be a blue
night with a disc moon and
an undulating glittering ground come
January or come

sooner than that and I know that
the grass will go long and matted and be
full of asters and wet with
just a little bit of rot and the
smell alone of it will

make you know everything
you ever needed to know and

the restraint it takes to
accept the ice
and the asters

without going into a panic of
digging and digging with my hands a
hole in the sand that
fills and fills and fills
with waves and waves and waves

and caves in on itself

the will it takes
to know what I know

and to do nothing more than

wave hello
and remember your birthday
a little late

what excruciates me
about having anything to do

with you.

On the Day That You Were Born

I promise
that I will not
ask you for
the honey

I just want you
to sing me that song
so sweet and high and
dry that I know you
know that I know you
wrote and sang one
hundred times in your
mind and played out on
your pretty
little guitar

the universe
didn't want
either one of us
and no one was
all that glad when
we were born

the rejoicing of
the animals
and the birds
and the people
and the sun, the moon, the stars
in a big circle

is just a fancy way of
obscuring that a bunch of
space dust
became you
became me

that is the
cold hard facts

but can't you see
what your hands would
look like if you
pressed them to
my shirtless back and you
leaned in close and
with your face found
my ear through my straw
hair and you sang me
that song that I know you
know and sang it
high and dry and I would
of course I would

love you too.

The Surgeons

I do not know
who covered me
in sutures
while I slept. Did I
look so in need of
repair as to earn a
body now embroidered in
stitch after stitch of
coarse black thread?

All I can do now is
deal with it
what's done is done
I move gingerly
from bed to bathroom
and back
trying not to pull, or
strain, or pop I
cannot bathe
this warm washcloth will
have to do for
my sore
and raw
and punctured flesh.

I sit on the
edge of the unmade bed and
close my eyes
this is where I go

1945 and those
black and white
photographs of field hospitals with
rows and rows and
rows of beds and men and
the surgeons
moving down them quick and sure and
slicing skin with scalpels and
cracking chests and breastplates and
plunging hands in
fingers fanned and reaching
over and over and
over again
for the heart
for their hearts
the copper salt smell of
hot blood and the
firm and pulsing meat
in their grabbing hands just to know
just to know
just to know

that its there
that its there and
that it is

alive
alive
alive.

Kilter

I am on
the wrong road
or trail
or path
or whatever works for you
for days and days. I sit
down at the counter and
eat bad egg salad
on rye
with too many chips
and a coke I couldn't
really feel for.

Its all too much.

So I turn over
stones and look for
salamanders or
is it newts or
maybe its rotty logs I
want to be turning here to
feel twelve again
concentrated and
light.

None of it will do.

Then I am
aimless on a walk
but not
in a good way
I'm on main roads
when the dusky backstreets
rife with cats
are called for and I'm
stopping at
all the wrong stores and
buying a coffee
I don't want
coffee only soothes
and joyfuls
in the morning.

You know what it is
to not be
in your body

the thick and dark and
bubbling clouds

without rain.

Idiot

I cannot hold onto images and some really good lines and phrases that come to me for more than about 3 seconds lately. I keep a notebook with me most of the time and I can't even retain it all until I have time to flip open the notebook. Is it the unending rain? Vitamin D deficiency? Until recently I could hold onto a good thought, turn of phrase and image all day until evening and then make it into something when I have time for this, generally around 10 pm. The past week? All poof. All gone. Zero retention.

Me, idiot-like.

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She descends
the long path and downsteps
to her door and
what else I cannot
say except that the
second floor windows are
glowing yellow as
if someone is
awake and
waiting and
listening

for her and this is
the mystery of all the
small signs such as her
license plate that
spells vie
for life
and that she never
knew that until now and

I have to ask you
because you might
know do you know how
many of her there are

walking down paths and
downsteps to
what with
vie and life and

hearts waiting to be
stroked open like a
morning water lily or like an
opening rose or

that fat bud peony
given over to
wanton glory
and scent
and half-blown vie
full-blown life.

At the Terminal

While I am waiting for you in
a hollow tunnel of
dust and light with the
wind and grit trying to
get at my eyes I think about how you
no and I
yes and I

can now only find
meaning and
solace in
these three things

an iron and glass lantern
unlit and hung in a
front yard
maple tree and the

vast span of an old
Vermont barn at
windy sunset with swifts swallows and
arcing old trees and a

minion of tiny minnows just under
the lily pads and millfoil and all the
other vegetation that shelters and
chokes us

you and me
these three
and the long wait for

yes and no.

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Here is an act
of love for you
the way I pile my hair all up
and bend down
when I sit beside you
and gently feel your
ankles for
what might be going on
here and
here and here

oh turn your shoulder when
I place my small hand there and
always turn towards me the

sweet bone of your high cheek
as you come about

it can rain for
days and days and we do
more than endure it we
open
we go loose

and I love to pull this
shirt up and over my head and
stretch and you
remember now how it becomes the
moment when you were told or
got to say

you can kiss me if you want to

your trouble, your worry
your tiny gems

I'm gone and here

you love
you fool
you, coming down.