In flames,
as if I were
a forest;
washed away,
as if I were 
a bridge;
shaken to ground
as if I were an old home 
built before
earthquake code. 

Now, you say.
Now you can rebuild.
It’s glorious.
It’s your dream.

I am alone with it, though.
The sheets are drunk
with my sweat
and only my sweat,
and this is not how
I imagined it.

Broken as I am,
on fire as I am,
on the ground as I am,
the flood lapping and rising
up this one hill upon which
I have found myself,

glory and the honest joy
of rebuilding
seem quaint notions 
upon which to rely.

Imagine you
are currently 
breathing pure Hell
directly from a mask
while submerged 
in the cool waters
of Heaven.

Imagine
it is making you more
than ordinarily Evil.

Imagine you have never
in fact been so Evil before 
and you don’t in fact
know for certain
what the purest
most rotten version
of such air 
should feel like.

Imagine
you’ve convinced yourself
that this is the right feeling
to carry into the next world.

Imagine who you will
leave behind. 

Imagine who you will regret
leaving behind. 

Imagine that small regret
turning into self-righteousness. 

Imagine you are breathing pure Hell
and that you now believe 
this is better than pure Heaven.

Imagine the reek of your world on fire
and that you are convincing yourself
that it is not you
but the flames on the tracks
you are leaving behind
on the people you have loved.

Imagine that
the fireworks proclaiming
and celebrating
your misguided vision
of your miserable life

are the perfect backdrop
to accompany your false rear-view
of the Evil you have left behind.

Imagine
you have nothing left to lose
anyway
so why not? 

To plant yourself between
what you are leaving behind
and a new path

is to hold yourself up
as if on crutches
you feel you should not need

but which have somehow
gradually become lodged

under your arms
without you noticing
the process.

Their presence to you
insinuates that
you are edging

toward a failure
of some sort,
mundane or

spectacular,
likely imminent,
possibly inevitable.

You are the between
times. Between
epochs, perhaps.

Crutches
have no roots.
Custom says you

will be moving soon
in one direction or
the other. But

you could defy that.
You could rise.
You could pass into

the earth below.
You could hold your breath
until you expire and vanish.

Or you could
hold fast to where you are
and see what comes to you

there. It doesn’t matter
to the earth if you waver
from side to side,

after all. What’s one more
indecision to the path
of Time, after all?

You’ve been this way
all your life, all through
Time. If you don’t

survive, if you don’t
thrive, it will not matter
to Time. Throw

those crutches down,
then. See what happens.
Nothing binary, perhaps.

Nothing that requires more of you
than waiting and accepting
whatever comes from that.

So.

Button this up.
Close it down.
Straighten the shirt,

tighten the belt
while you’re standing there,
just standing there.

So.

Put
the pieces together.
Make sure they match.

Let’s agree at least
that where they do not match
they complement each other.

Let’s nod in agreement 
over that detail
regardless

of whether or not
the agreement
between us is complete.

Let’s agree to disagree
if we must. You’ve been 
standing there

for more than a while and
certainly you want
to get going.

Been prepping
for this
long enough

and just standing there
must be
chafing. 

So.

Get going. Pay no attention
to the sound of people grumbling
and raging.

That will be irrelevant soon enough.
It’s going to be hard enough without
allowing yourself that aggravation.

Lay yourself down
by the riverside. Don’t worry
about how you look. 

Your clothes match or at least
the colors don’t clash and 
it’s cooler here in the shade.

It’s the last place
on earth that’s cool enough
for comfort. 

Might as well be comfortable.
Might as well get dressed
for success and failure 

as they are
coming to you
in equal measure.

You’ll look good
when they find you. 
You’ll look good. 

So.

No one in the future
will understand this
anyway. Might as well

lie down,
look good,
feel better.

The questions
I have left
fall into
two categories:

unimportant chatter,
or clearing smoke
from a mirror —

how much time?
How much pain?
How much pleasure?
How much joy?
How much sorrow?
Once again, how much time?

Then I go into the backyard
and there’s one reddish squirrel
under the huge maple
in the same shade
where the robins feed,
robins who never come
to the front yard
where the chattering
below the feeders
has been incessant from dawn
through dusk
for all my time.

Would I have been a better man
if I’d seen this earlier, spent more time seeing this?

Why have I stayed in the front room
behind the windows all these years?

And again,
how much time do I have left?

Aiming at the walnut tree
and missing.

It’s so big yet somehow
the arrow lands in the tall grass 
to the side, to the west. Sunset is 
not yet here, but its approach
is obvious now in long shadows,
this dusk-rinsed light.

I will seek the arrow
tomorrow. Too much chance 
of missing it in the hayfield tonight
and then choosing to give up
and leave it there
out of frustration with a goal
unachieved. Even tomorrow
would have been too late
to succeed. 

It is admirable, I guess,
to be able to walk away from this
and not think of it as a failure
or shortcoming on my part.
So mature, so clear-headed.

Inside though?
The real monologue:
listen, I took the shot.
I missed the target. 
I left the arrow behind.
My form was fine.
I should have at least
struck the target. 

I should have. I could have.
I could blame the light,
I suppose. I could blame the shadows
and my fatigue although
that’s still on me: I should have
known better.

The walnut tree.
Now in dusk. 

What would
my father say to me
if he were here? 

It’s been one of those days
where the spiders jump past me
looking for a better man to scare

They know I’m not one of the better men
That being what I am lends itself
to not being so easily scared

That instead I will look at them
and ask what I can learn from this
as they creep their way into nightmares

of people less enamored of such things
as the small and many-legged make for 
beautiful jump scares, really quite something

I am not one of the better men
I seek to use this knowledge of how to terrify
as a backdrop for how I get through the world

for I am not a good man at all
I’ve got the wisdom of spiders and snakes in me
All the good they do in the world becomes venom

once it’s inside me
I learned to use it for my selfishness
All they want to do with it is survive

and all I want to do is thrive and hide
and leap and slither — come and go
yon and hither

The jumping spiders have it good
Even if they are killed they leave behind
a memory and a shudder…as will I

Miesha moves
willingly from my desk to 
the tray table. I quickly
set up the laptop
before she changes her mind.

I don’t have much space these days
in which to find peace. She seems
to know a secret about how to do it 
that I do not. Narrow her world,
find rest in a narrower place:

cat wisdom. The poems
keep on narrowing as does
what I can see of where I live:
poet wisdom. The cat seems content,
as I do not. What I want

is not paradise, not hell;
not even a good night’s rest,
really. What I want is some sense
of a wider possibility than this. A desk
that has room to offer everything I want

whenever I want it.
I struggle with the phrase,
“To everything there is a season.”
Miesha sleeps facing the window
regardless of the season. Maybe

that is the entirety of the secret:
sleep where you can, when you can. 
Take what you are given,
stay ready for what may come; outside
the birds are waking up, after all.