You will know
a million things
by the time you are
twelve, a million more
by eighteen, another
half million by thirty.

By the time
you are fifty,
you’ll have boiled that pile
of things you’ve known
down to near nothing
and kept from that only
a small heap.

Trust me on this:
what I have known
hasn’t helped much.
What I have felt
has mattered more:

that I am
mostly ego, sick ego,
one hardly ever fit enough
to call myself sane;

that I need to be alone
to feel complete,
but I do need One
to be close by.

Also:
when I speak like this of myself,
it’s called “art” by some
and “foolishness” by others.

You can hide
a lot of yourself
in either of those.

All the townsfolk here
look like words.  
On Sundays
in the park, it’s a novel;
late nights
bring out taut verses,
and at noon time
Main Street
is a run-on sentence.

My friend John
looks exactly like
the word
“egret” —

not like
the bird but like 
the name of the bird:
he’s short and similar
to “regret” but not quite
that, though

John often pouts that
he’d rather be “buffalo”
or “wolf.”  Even “python”
would be preferable, he says.

I say, ” Hey c’mon, John,
you’re elegant, a flyer,
a perfect and delightful cool startle
from the river’s edge
when we pass.”

“Easy for you to say,
‘ghost,’ ”
is his retort.
 
I fade before that.
Incorporeality
is no match in the moment
for a wounded
male ego, though I know
in the long run,
I will win.  Right now, though,
I’ll let the machismo slide.
We live in a dictionary,
we didn’t write the definitions,
and we’re each of us a little hot
under the syllable —
it’s not even clear to many of us
that we were born
to speak this tongue.

Two bald eagles
fell out of the sky
onto the runway in Duluth
and wouldn’t stop fighting
even then, so tangled
were their talons…

someone took a picture,
someone put it in the paper, 
someone put it on the Web,
someone made a
Congressional joke, and another
an Executive joke, and another made it
a metaphor for the state of the Union,
and another used it to speak of 
the follies of masculinity…

The eagles were taken away
in a pickup truck. On the way
to rehab one, apparently uninjured,
lifted off and flew away while the other
stayed behind and will be healed
and will be released again,
and no one has made that
into anything other than a wonderment
at what it must have been like 
to see that eagle rising from the bed 
of a pickup ahead of you
in traffic on the interstate…

somehow,
were I to choose bend
an eagle’s condition
to my own purposes,
I think 
that moment
would far outshine
anything I might feel
about them crashing,
angry, to the tarmac. 

““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`

— the eagles in question

Once upon a time
there was a basket

and there were
hats in the basket.
A blue cap, a black beret,
a red beret.  Tight fit,
three hats
in a basket.  

All day long
a man living in the apartment
where the basket also lived
changed hats:
blue cap for the world,
black beret for family,
red beret for his lover. 
It was tight, tight to
manage the time, the
elbow room, the sequence.
But he changed hats

all day long.  After dark
he sat on the fire escape
hatless, city wind
snaking through
the brick and mortar,
whipping past other bachelor nests
to end up in his hair, 
fingers tousling through
as if the wind were yet another lover
with a ingrained disdain for hats.

There was a basket full of hats,
a man who changed them
all day long, a wind longing
to become a thief, a vandal: blue cap
to be left on the waterfront.  Black beret
to be flung into an alley.  Red beret
to be hung on a fence out of reach.

Go away wind, said the man one day.
I love your fingers and the way you seem
to end up here instead of with other men
but more than that, I love my hats.
If ever I give them up,
it won’t be because
you’ve taken them from me.

Go away yourself, said the wind.
I love your hair a bit, but more than that
I love thinking of your hats disappearing,
escaping, ending up in disguises, 
in the trash,
anywhere but on your head.
I want you without a hat.
I will do hurricane things to make that happen.

Go away both of you,
said the basket.
Each of you 
is narrow and stubborn
and unchanging. 
My hats are the only thing
that makes either of you
interesting. All your talk
of some imaginary
bare-headed realness
is wasting my time,

and when you’re both quiet,
when it’s just me and the finally
unsymbolic hats in the dark,
that feels like the start 
of the happy part
of the ever after.

Enough salt spilled
to be noticed on black paper,
not so much that I couldn’t count
the number of individual grains,
though I don’t; it’s surely not enough
to pinch up and toss against bad luck.

Happens often enough but
I’m afraid it’s starting to get
ruinous.  I should have been
vigilant before this.
Spill enough salt and demons
begin to stalk you;

unstable demons, thirsting for salt.
That explains the fear
that’s chewing at me
as the phone doesn’t ring today,
didn’t ring yesterday,
hasn’t rung in months.

I have a good resume, strong skills,
ready references. I interview well,
fit in, get along, can lead or follow as needed.
I know who I am and what I can do.
I know who I was and how I got here.
So it must be demons holding back the job.

They have to be the reason
I have time to sit here and count
grains of salt to collect and throw.
They have to be displeased with me;
I only hope
it’s not too late to atone.

It is salt in the wound
to know how insane this sounds,
salt in the wound that I no longer care.
I am counting
and hoping for enough salt
to throw soon.

changing the bark on a tree,
like marrying the Biblical Sarah,
seems like a ridiculous goal.

putting the rutabaga on a lathe
to turn it into a parsnip
seems pointless and a tad crazed.

ducking into the empty moat for a cigarette —
how long should we keep this up?
child, we’re smashed, we’re gassed, we’re

unwelcome as painters
in a glass walled room. cobweb tough,
kangaroo steady.  brothers of the needle,

sisters of the gearshift, children of the hammer.
what we do is nonsensical for a living, but not
for a life —  we were made to badger

the orderly whorl of creation’s fingerprints
into changing. how’s that been working out?
not well.  but try and stop us.  just try.

it will always come down to us
tending the kettle of crayons,
whether you like it or not.

When a rose I planted
for a dead friend
refused to grow,
what choice was there
but to pull it out and
begin again?

When a second rose
also failed to thrive
and in fact died,
what choice was there 
but to pull it out and
begin again?

Now a third rose
will not take.  
Friend,
what are you trying
to tell me?

Perhaps
there’s nothing
after this life
and such memorials
are pointless.

Perhaps
in this life
you didn’t love roses
and I didn’t know you
as well as I should have.

Perhaps
I am a bad gardener
and kill what I put effort into
because enthusiasm is no 
substitute for skill.

Friend, I have a dying rosebush
with your name on it;
what am I supposed to do with it?

Friend, why don’t you speak to me?
You went back into this earth,
did you not?  Why will nothing grow now?

Tireless watching at the window
if there’s something out there,
not at all if there’s not.  
Working when there’s work, 
not at all when there’s not.  

There’s always something to see
and always work to be done,
cry some.  If you’re bored, you are
boring, they cry.  And when I respond
eh, not so much, here’s yet another case

of blaming the victim, you
and the notorious Puritan
Work Ethic looking for a soft place
to set the hooks
screech like a box of peeved owls.  

Owls only look wise. You know
that’s all in our heads. We see
the forward set eyes, think they’re human
as if that guaranteed wisdom — those
blamers, always yelling “Who?” Just like you.

So, tireless watching at the window
if there’s something out there,
working when there’s work and not at all
when there’s not.  Boring happens.  Someone
can bore me, can be behind or ahead of my page.

I’ll get over it, or leave of my own accord,
but maybe my best move is to get bored, to stay there
for some message about patience or humility.
Shut up about everyone needing to “do something.”
I prepare some of my best work when I’m doing nothing.