It’s time
to just be high
and let go
of one moment
of control.

I can’t feel much
in my little fingers
right now. My feet
burn whenever
I put weight on them.
Something’s
wrong with my body,
but nothing’s wrong with 
that;

what’s happening
is what should happen
at this stage
of The Condition
and
while I’ll treat it
and fight it and 
et cetera it,

it’s doing
what it is made to do and
the body’s reacting
as it was made to do
so

I’m going to get high
and take a moment to say
all is dead on for the horizon
and all is right with 
my tingling, burning,
blood-shot world.

Went for a walk
and found a granite ledge
calling from where
it poked through
the frozen floor
of a clearing

I put my ear to it

The voice was
unlike that in a shell
that cradles
the womb-song of
ocean

Instead
a muffled
operatic baritone
declaimed other essentials
and broke now and then
into warm silence

I cannot recall a word I heard

although
inside me
the sacristy
where I hold
my best self
still rings
and echoes

and I have placed
a stone
in my pocket
to carry with me
always

he came late
sat at my table

after some small talk
and some formalities 
he began to speak
of why we were meeting

he had changed
he said 

drank from a tall glass of whiskey
ran an unsteady hand over his head
front to back

he had changed
he said again

not the same man
had done some growing up
came to realize, etc.

working his steps

I looked hard at the glass
then at him
at his eyes

I said 
put it together for me
make it make sense

oh
not for this he said
tilting the glass 
to make his point

for the other

I said
what other 
he said

water under the bridge
over the broken dam
does it matter
what other
trying to talk here
trying to make amends

ran hand over head
tilted the glass
I’ve changed he said
I’m sorry

I’m sorry 
dammit 
ingrate
wait
no 
sorry

he tossed apologies
at the back of my head
as I stopped tilting
at windmills
and walked out

dime and penny
in my pocket.
eleven cents:

all I’ve got.

it may not seem worth
hanging on to
but I will hang on to it

for if I give you
a penny for your thoughts
I’ll feel I’ve overpaid

and then all I’ll have
is one thin dime
so how will I ever
make some time?

eleven cents
is nothing to build on.
you can’t buy anything
with it.
it’s not even enough
to make me feel more lost
if I lose it,

but I will hold
dime and penny
even though
they don’t clink
when they collide
in my pocket,

even though
they make more
of a grinding sound.

They once spoke of her blooming talent
as if she were a flower or at least the soil
a talent grew in.

They whispered of her dropping out
as the bloom coming off the rose
or as the fading of early promise.

They stopped speaking of her at all
and she was better off for it 
once the garden metaphors 

were gone and she 
could simply work
on what she was born to do…

Her brother on the other hand
worked hard and forged his own path
right up to the moment the world 

passed him by and he was cruelly
neglected until he disappeared
and it was a tragedy

they mentioned in every review
of her work from her first triumph
to the late career retrospective

which was titled 
“Final Fruits,”
of course.

I salute
the encircling arms
of whatever’s
holding me today

for keeping me
from falling

though I’ve tipped
and teetered
from sunrise
till now on the edge of
dusk 
and was not
at all sure that
a fall wasn’t
the best thing
for me

I honor whatever it was
that knew better
and held faster
to me
than I would have
had I been
in sole charge

Tomorrow may be different
Tomorrow I may
let myself go and fall

but tomorrow will come
thanks to whatever
held me today

The high wind has never died down
since that early spring day.

Drop something light now
and it’s gone. Drop something heavy

and the sound of it landing
might not be heard.  We all 

hold tight to our things, discard less,
build our possessions with points

for fasteners to hold them close.
Hats? Chin straps or nothing.

Skirts? Umbrellas? Things
of the past.  We’ve all gotten good

at handling kites, the Age Of Sail
has been reborn, and fossil fuels

are laughed at as a relic
of a stiller time.  That said,

we may never mention it
but everyone dreams now and then

of living underwater,
far enough down

that we could not hear the surface
if we tried.  In the worst moments

some climb to the tops
of mountains, open their arms,

and fall into the fatal gale:
same as it ever was,

same as
it ever was.

After decades
of considering
how behavior shifts
in light of circumstance —
of considering how concrete fact
trumps principle and opinion —
of considering how little
holds up as universal
and becomes parochial
and local
and particular —

how delicious it feels
at last to reach a point
where only today
do I realize
that yesterday
I did not judge
or assume
anything

about a couple and a child
moving slowly in single file
toward the swings
in the park,
heads down,
singing in a tongue
I don’t recognize;

and then
when I was humbled
into recognizing
my own self-congratulatory tone,
how resigned I became
to the work left to do,
to the distance left to travel
toward the day when I note only
what is necessary
and all I have to say is

how beautiful the park
and all its people
were yesterday.