Samson,
they’d say,

how your hair does float
like a river in noon light.

Samson, 
they would say,

you look almost Biblical.
Must be the name.

Samson,
they say,

looked like a promise,
raged like a broken oath.

Samson,
some say,

took a lion apart,
pushed down a temple.

Samson
has said

all he bears is the name
and none of the strength;

blind forever now,
betrayed by love. 

Samson
asks for a rest

from our expectations.
What do I look like,

he asks, some
inexhaustible myth?

Where is my hair?
What of the waves

I used to carry, what of
beauty, what of the real me?

Samson,
we say, your hair

is a river at high noon
now, a piece of mystery.

Samson, 
exalted, made into song;

Samson cries,
all I asked for was love. Not this.

Elsewhere is the place
I mostly want to be
The word I utter most often
The thought I hold up front

Here is all the ruin
and the whip snap of the storm
The broken glass in a bare foot
The dawning sense of wound

Elsewhere is the house
I wish was still standing
Open or closed as needed
Insured and strong and mine

Here is what I want to say
I have missed the train to elsewhere
The wait for the next one is so long
I don’t know if I can stay here

A crow
with open wings
on the neighbor’s roof.

A beagle mix 
I do not recognize, trotting alone
down the far sidewalk.

Tracks
of squirrel, cat, maybe others
in new snow.

Cars parked in front
of homes with their curtains drawn
until their mornings begin.

I forget, sometimes,
that this is also a true face
of my country,

marvel at how many
have found a way
to sleep soundly here,

even in daylight. Even
as peace is failing.
Even as rough beasts

prevail, movement
apparently free from care
and caution continues.

I am afraid
to step out. Deal
with it, I tell myself.

Like the crow on the roof
with raised wings, look
bigger than you are.

The stray dog who 
trots free to spite the law
says, deal with it.

The tracks say
deal with it, be gone 
before you are seen. 

The houses and cars 
say deal with it; safety exists,
if only temporarily.

I am the fool here,
the crazy guy, the contrary
telling you what I feel. 

It doesn’t make me
less glad for peace
outside my windows

that I am
on edge
most of the time.

I just long
to sleep in
more often. 

A dozen bills
in my wallet
at the end of winter. 

Maybe now that
the sun’s shining harder
upon us, more
will grow— not on trees,
of course. I know
the proverbs too well
to expect such a thing.

I’d have
to change the world
with a violent shaking
to make that happen,
to bring us all
a true money tree.

Imagine coin buds unfolding
into tender notes, falling
into our open hands when they ripen.

Imagine plucking one or more
from an overhanging branch
as needed.

A dozen bills
in my wallet
at the end of winter.

Who speaks 
of money by bill count instead of
by total and denomination? I do,
today at least. Need to treat this
as if they are part of nature’s bounty
carefully chosen, lovingly
enumerated. To say:
I have a dozen bills today
saved all winter 
from the cold and snow.
They fold, they
take up space, are real. 
What they are worth
feels secondary

as I take them out,
clutch them in my hand,
then put them away
without looking at them.

It may be spring
but I don’t want to 
enter the pain of
the growing season
just yet. I don’t want to do
the work of abstraction
just yet. 

The dark messages, the
wisps of smoky intrigue: these
confusing inflections of sex,

this flood of impulses of how to begin
to fumble into the space
of another: we likely never

shall understand any of this
well enough to say
we are not at sea

when faced with it, and yet
we come back to it again and again
behaving as we did the first time.

Count upon the succulents
in your front window
to show you how
to help life thrive.

Watch how they soak in what they need
from water you pour into a pan
below their roots, and how you 
may assist further by shifting them  

toward good light
from their dim past. Understand
how to gently move them
as they grow toward bigger pots

without breaking those roots;
if they flower, learn how to be tender
with the long thread-blooms rising
from their centers:

so much to be said for the succulents;
for the stone plants, the jade trees,
the fierce and hardy cacti. They are
the book of understanding how to care