If you don’t mind I will just
stand still for a bit longer.
Turn up your volume

if you want but no amount
of rock shall roll me
from this spot. Music stopped 

pushing me around a while ago.
I sit and noodle now and then,
but only when I want. I’m not

driven as I once was. I’m not 
cuffed to sound. I barely listen
except in the car and that’s mostly

to drown out the noise from my wallet,
my brakes that need attention,
my muffler that needs attention.

How did any of it pass inspection?
If you don’t mind I’ll just stand
still a bit longer. Here in the line 

it’s nerve-soothing quiet.
It goes on ahead of me for years.
I can’t see the Doorway just yet, 

but when I get there I hope
it’s just as quiet. I don’t care
about the rest. Maybe I’ll be able

to hear myself playing guitar
without guilt for not being more
than I was. Maybe there will be

no car or wallet within miles.
Maybe I’ll be loved again, or
at least at peace

without having that,
if I can once again
just pass inspection.

You lie still and silent
while waiting
for the siren
to arrive 
from too far away

You didn’t have the sense 
to fall and clutch your chest
a little closer to the main road
and now they are having
to figure out 

where the hell you are
even as your party friends
are screwing out of there before
the responders arrive
and bend a knee to your side 

Once again you are inconvenient
Maybe one of those friends stuck around
Is watching from a distance and could tell
an EMT what happened if they came forward
But you aren’t holding your breath for that

Almost one hundred per cent
of the time I have spent
in doorways was intentionally
transitory. I was moving 

from one place to the next
and the brief time in the doorway
was not a time I saw
as significant. 

There were moments
where I hovered between
and those matter more now
than they did then. 

I look back and see how
the time between spaces
should have held me
tighter than it did.

It would surely have prepared me
for more wonder.
Might have prepared me
for dispassionate scrutiny

of my options, exposed 
views of possibilities: past, future,
most of all of the moment:
the chance to lean between

and think. I might have
moved on, I might
have retreated, 
or I might still be there

thinking about
passages and how they are framed,
how I fail when I do not
stop to consider that.

Here is another doorway.
Rooms on either side.
Up to me and only me
whether or not to pass

unless the choice is seized 
from me and I fall
forward or backward or 
collapse in a heap where I am.

If that happens, friends, push me through
to the next room and let the people say
it was my choice to go that way. It might be
the truth. No one will ever know otherwise. 

if you ever wake up one day
more transparent than the day before,
closer to ghostliness than the day before, 

you may feel at first that this is 
the ultimate tragedy toward which 
every act in your obviously broken timeline

has pulled you (or pushed you depending 
on whether it was in your dreams or your past
where it all began). you shall look through 

the formerly corporeal palms of your hands
down at your shimmering feet and see
they are no longer concealing the ground

upon which you walk. you shall sit down,
frightened of sinking through the floor, sifting into
the basement like sand through a sieve.

at least, I did. of course, you may find a difference
between how you disappear and how I am
disappearing. I will just say there was no need

to be so frightened at first on my part because 
I soon realized that little had changed
since I’d never left much footprint behind me

before this, having always trod lightly,
never leaving a mark. instead I found myself
floating, walking as I always had

through the same rooms I’d had for years,
touching common things so casually
it was as if I wasn’t feeling anything as I raised

the coffee cup. from elsewhere in the room
any onlooker would have seen me as not 
entirely there as I sipped, and that

would have seemed entirely normal. I am,
I think, the only person surprised at how little impact
I’ve had on things around me. a see through man,

a whisper of a human, touching but never fully holding
anything. now, at last, I am frightened.
again, your mileage may vary. at least, it should.

In his head, loud
had always meant final

and had been the sound
of closing. It briefly surprised him

to find that his staggering in silence
after the loud was closer to the mark.

The bullets screwed through him
noiselessly on their trajectories.

The sweep of pain throughout his body
did not make a sound

and smothered
all the rest.

Death did it all
with a long white finger to his lips.

Red stroke by the window.
A cardinal is here.
Occasional visitor
who’s been around
in short bursts
for most of the day.

Under the feeders, also
present from first light,
a mourning dove.
Can’t recall the last time
one came and stayed
like this, although
we hear them often 
from overhead.

The cardinal holds court
from the shepherd’s crook
that holds the suet cage.
The dove holds the humble ground
below.

Red stroke by the window again.

The cardinal is gone — stayed long enough 
for cardinal purposes, although
gone too fast, left too soon for us;

the mourning dove remains — 
cooing, soothing,
peace in its voice
along with tears
and a promise of return.