If you ever become
the estranged middle aged son
of still living old people
with middle aged siblings and
a middle aged heart, lungs, and back,
you will one day reach a point
when the shovel
and the snow
will defeat you
right in the middle of a snowstorm.

You will have long abandoned
the over the shoulder toss in favor of
the tip and dump of each shovelful
onto a growing pile of packed trouble
and you’ll have this moment of despair
when you realize there is no place left
to put the next load.  You will
have to figure that out soon
but for that moment you’ll be stopped
cold. 

Your back will feel broken.  Your
chest will be caving and exploding.
You are going to cough
every time you move.

You are going to have a moment
of thinking about how far you are
from your still living old parents
and your middle aged siblings
who are likely standing helpless
in the same storm. 

You are going to look up and see
families on the street
digging more vigorously
than you are, see their children laughing,
see their cars beginning to move.

You are going to think of
your aged parents and
your unhealthy siblings
in the same storm, struggling
to dig out but doing it together,

and you are going to be
ashamed.

When you get out of bed,
remind yourself

that anything you can think about
you can sing about.
Anything worth thinking about
is worth singing about.

Seize hold of the faucet handles
in the bathroom, consider
the logical piping, the gravity feed
of waste water, think about its path
from you into the marvel
of what’s under our streets,

and start humming as you load
the toothbrush with toothpaste.

Add now the lyrics about the nature
of up and down, about
the muscles in your arm leveraging
and bulging under the thick blanket
of skin.  Rhyme “dermis”
with something, something…
rhyme “dermis” with “firmest”
for now, you can come back to it later.

Choral parts for the process
of putting on pants?  Yes.
Antiphonal sections on
the buckling of a belt?  Yes.
Why not write a piano line
on the way the T-shirt
molds over your nose as you pull it on?
Compose, solo, harmonize, improvise!

Don’t tell yourself,
“there’s nothing to write about.”
Don’t tell yourself,
“I’m not angry or depresssed
so there are no subjects left in the world.”
Don’t convince yourself
of a need for emotional upheaval
to make your claim to the title of artist.

And don’t fall in love with a person
just to get cracking on your masterpiece:
love the floor,
love the walls, the fly parts
embedded in the plaster.
See the fugue in coffeemaker,
the symphony in litter box,
the string quartet in the way
the coolant runs through your car’s engine.

Anything worth thinking about
is worth singing about.
You know that.  You’ve thought
about everything at least once,

and there was music
when you did.