Edging closer
to a border
than you thought
you would or could.

Fear inside
rising slowly
about how it 
might be necessary
or even exciting
to make this move
you swore you could
never make.

That is no
promised land
on the other side,
and you know it.

Yet you are standing
closer to the border
than you ever have
looking toward
the grey-green of
those far hills.

You imagine one day
having gained
enough comfort
to go trekking
carefree through those hills
with a basket
of good cheese
and bread, perhaps 
wine for the end
of the journey.

You take a step
not over,
but toward. 

Daylight tinged
with dusk sliding 
up and over 

Accustomed birds
beginning 
to disappear

All day
I have fought a roiling and 
a burning within

The end of the sun
is a relief
Night will be a balm

unless this continues
through dreams
and emerges at dawn

to drag me into
another day
of wrath and confusion

Although the calls
of my neighbor birds
would normally calm me

I will not lay the burden
of easing me through this
upon them

Instead I will sleep until
the pain has stopped
or at least until

I can stop it myself 
day or night
unassisted and in silence

Unseen bird thumping
against glass
then flying away
unhurt 

Bursts of clacking
as downy woodpeckers
hammer their beaks
into bricks of seed

Fanfare of chirps
and wings flapping as
next door’s hunting cat
charges and fails as always

then inevitably
the sound of them
all returning together
immediately 

and that damned squirrel
at it again — probing
the cages to see what
could be gained there

They say you should
take your feeders down
in summer or never put them
up at all but truly

I would be lost and crazy
if I did as this is how
I make myself want 
to look outside

at something other than
the red black backs
of my eyelids shut tightly
against anything but myself

My legacy
will not be one
of honor and fame,
I know. No 
easy rest for me
in the knowledge of
a lasting memory
what I’ve done.
I suspect instead
that there will be
for only a few years
a flurry of 
brief, vague 
comments upon
who I was
and what I
left behind
and then
the forgetting
will begin
and that
will be all,
will have to be 
satisfactory. 
I’m practicing
for it now: blending
into the curtains
drawn across
the windows
that look out upon
the bright bright
world. Soon enough
I’ll be pulled back
so people can see
how it shines.
Maybe a few 
will learn to love
what I left behind:
tales of how
to take shelter
in the dark
that inevitably follows
the dimming
of the day.

stop 
playing musical chairs
with people who are told beforehand
when the music will stop so they are
always ahead of you in getting to
a seat. 

stop
playing double dutch
with people who can tie a noose
in the rope and catch you by the neck
in mid-air before you
touch down.

stop 
pretending life 
is no longer grade school. 
it will always be
battleground recess, 
every day. 

stop
thinking that bully and bullied
isn’t the name of the big game
we start playing early
and are made to play until
very late.

you
have choices. pick a side
or walk away. play the role
written for you or 
write another game for yourself
to play. but

whatever
you choose, stop pretending
the streetlights are not yet on
and it is not time to come in
from the dark before it gets too dark
to win.