Stray corn plants 
in the flower bed
from birds
who shit feeder kernels 
mid-flight;

random tomato
in an empty bed,
likely from last year’s
crop, variety likely
to remain unknown
until near harvest;

what’s this
sunflower doing here,

what even is that
growing there?

Where to begin — 
what to do with the volunteers
once you understand 
their origin; to see
how they grow,
let them stay or to
replant or cut them
mercilessly down
because they do not fit
your designs and desires.

What is this sunflower
doing here
by the front walk?

I bought
a stove top percolator
to replace my broken French press 
which replaced my messy single cup maker
which replaced
my unrepairable
12 cup programmable drip machine

People on the street
stared after me as I walked to work
as if they knew me
for an eccentric
and how I had filled the stainless steel pot
with fresh cold water
and measured the tablespoons
into the basket
as it sat upon the hollow stem
and put the basket lid on and then
replaced the top of the maker
with its glass dome 
and set it on the gas flame

How I’d waited for the first sound
of the perk and watched 
the good brown bubble up

How it smelled in the sagging kitchen air
How it tasted with my eyes closed
How I’d tried to figure out
how long since
I’d last made coffee 
in a percolator — forty years?
forty five?

Is that long enough
for this coffee to be retro? 
Am I hipster now,
Luddite so far behind
I’m now ahead?

I don’t care
I must have needed to do this
for I remembered something
about myself when 
while measuring in the coffee
I covered the hole in the stem
with my other thumb
to prevent grounds from falling in
and getting into the water
and getting into the cup

It’s the care
my father taught me
to take
when you make coffee 
in a percolator

We imagine ourselves
as wolves and owls, hawks
and lions, sharks and
deep-eyed jaguars;
they do not imagine
ever becoming one of us.

No animal
has ever had
a spirit human.
They are comfortable
as themselves.

Never see themselves
in pale hikers, secret lovers
naked and earthbound,
villagers in their encampments;
do not envy the accounting manager
fly fishing in a mountain stream,
dressed to the outdoor nines, failing
at every other cast.

We are selective as well
in hard to fathom ways:
we never say
I am the worm that endures in darkness,
I am the hard shelled crab that opens
to vulnerability often, yet survives,
I am the trout that escapes death
but hovers nearby after fleeing.

So hard to admit
we are not comfortable
beings, that we 
can rarely recognize
what we need
even when
it’s before us. 

I live my life amused
by those in love with
being in possession of
the backstage pass:

those smug with having
all access, familiarity,
easiness; those imagining 
it matters beyond the moment

the door opens
and everyone else
gets a glimpse and maybe
envies them for that time.

I live my life sorry
I cannot hand such passes
to everyone who longs for one:
my own world doesn’t 

qualify as worthy 
of such exclusive access.
If I could let you all in
to the places you want to be

I would. Some
privileges are worth using
and that I don’t have them
doesn’t make me think them

utterly unimportant. 
If I could break down those doors
I would and I would not take your 
place within, friend; I’d turn away

not in scorn but in humility,
happy to have served
and off to seek
another place to do the same. 

Tip of the spear:
redder than they are.

A spear doesn’t care
what it pokes or pierces

as long as its wielder
is happy to see red.

The spear in the hand 
of a true-blue hero

is just as happy
to poke its old handler

as it was when that villain
was grinning and sticking

whoever is
holding it now.

Someone is going to die
by spear and sword.

Stop hating the spear
and instead grab ahold

and take it
and use it and 

see how it shines. See how
you shine. You can beat it

into some other form
when you win

and if you lose,
you won’t need to.