I’m walking into
the house after work
and by chance
I look to the left

toward the patch below
our front room windows,
toward
the black-mulched front yard

pitted all over
from squirrels and birds
winter hunting,
hunger looking.

City made us take
the feeders down last year,
claiming rats would come 
also hunting, looking.

Right at my feet
first daffodils 
poke up from
next to the walkway;

we saw a cardinal
in the bare red bush
yesterday for the first time
since November.

Only time I’ve ever seen 
a rat on this street
was mid-summer, rooting
through the long leaves

of daffodils and hostas.  I stop,
look hard at the roughed-up yard.
I miss the birds, think of putting
the feeders back in March —

maybe just one, risk a trade off:
take a chance on pestilence
to stave off hunger. Some say
feeders are always a bad idea.

I don’t know about that. I do know
I miss the birds
and it won’t be too long
till the daffodils bloom, and

God only knows
what hunger will bring
to my front yard once they do.
I go into the house to think.

Country anthem, blues medallion,
banners of dance and punk and metal;
slap a label on your tribe
and see if it gets larger. 

Eat your feelings, drink your anger,
parade collective sorrow;
buy the right athletic shoe,
outrace a dicey future.

Consume an offered talisman,
invoke a plastic idol;
you are not far from cavelight, friends.
Embrace it as you’re able.

A morning 
as cold
as hell is hot;
I’m ready to go 
North from here.

The old folks used to say
a dying soul went south;
what does that mean when
I’m already South?
Heading into life?

I doubt it’s colder there
than it is here but
the only way to truly know
is to go and learn. So North
I go from what is supposed to be

the end of the journey,
the last stop on the way. It proves
you shouldn’t believe everything 
you’ve been told. It proves
nothing until I get there.

Daylight comes up
over a landscape
of sheets and pillows
and clothing folded neatly
last night to wait
until this morning
to be tucked away. 

You remember
how long ago
you saw mountains
that at sunrise looked
just like this room does
right now.

It’s time to get up.
Those clothes aren’t going 
to put themselves away.

You rise from bed
with gratitude;
being unable to escape from
memories is how you begin
to pass from the world
and you wake up grateful
for memories,
however mundane,
that are yet to be made.

You never imagined
you’d end up wishing
for a colder snowier winter

or for less sunshine,
less heat in your summer,
more water in your town pond.

That you’d be missing
the sub-zero of January
in New England

and the damnable,
tropical, reddened
air of August. You must

see it — the formerly
painful weather 
of your youth is gone,

and this nostalgia is 
harbinger only
of pain to come. 

Spill over habit
from the work week:
I am up and alert
and resentful as always
over being up
well before
I want to be.

Either that or this
is where I need to be
and though the body
might know, the rest of me
doesn’t understand why.

I resent this unknown need
only slightly less than the other.

Yesterday on the stairs to my office
someone behind me told someone else
to have an “attitude of gratitude”
for the day.  

I will try to cultivate that
but it’s hard to grow 
such a flower in this soil.

It may console you to know — 
and I admit that is not at all certain,
has yet to be determined — 
that there may be a road
somewhere ahead 
that can get us out of here,
take us somewhere we’ve never been
that is better than this.

People like to talk about
“the good old days”
forgetting how often 
someone’s good old days
were ankle-deep in the misery
of others. Were nurtured
in blood and tears, 
fed on bones and theft.

You might have to
give something away
to walk that road.
Something you rely on.
Something you call your own, deep rooted
like the oak your grandfather planted
in the front corner
of the lot where stands
your family home. 

You may not have to
cut the tree down — 
but you might.

At the least
you should gather the acorns
and give them away to be planted
to people who’ve long been starved
for shade, beauty,
the ecstasy
of watching something grow.

whatever I know now
is less than I did 

as I’ve shed 
much of what I had thought

was universal
in favor of the particulars

of my skin and hers
in opposition

to hard things
that have been sold to us all

this was all I had ever needed
to get by

there has been such a sense
of wasted time

that of late
I can hardly bear up

and I do forever fear
it could still cut me down

Simply put:
purify. 

Open your dim places
and wash them clean.
Scrub all your worn places,
no matter how lit they are
or are not, and stop only
when the brush-bristles are worn 
to nubs.  

There may be nothing left
when you’re done, true,
but then you should ask
what it has cost you to carry all this
from place to place, from one year
to the next. 

There may be blood
on your knuckles
when you are done,
filth on your knees;
you may be coughing
and your eyes might sting
from the view of what you are now;
and honestly?
Maybe you’ll die.

It’s possible.

The point is
that once purified,
you’ll have room.

Anything else
might also be possible.

In my left hand pocket,
a birthday card from 1923
found in a dresser drawer
at an antique store,
addressed to “Freddy”
on his fourteenth birthday:
September 3rd, 1923.
Why did Freddy 
leave this card from
“Aunt Sarah” behind?
How did it come to be
in the drawer?
Was it left here
by Freddy, never delivered
by Aunt Sara, put here
by a shopper playing a trick
on unsuspecting me
in particular, or
was it randomly placed?

Is anything
randomly placed?

I think about that
on the way home as I play
an old song in the car.

No, not that one.

I don’t know what this poem
has to say
that hasn’t been said before,
over and over, 
by better poets.

I just know
I had to say it
again:

is anything random?
After all it is the third of September
and it’s a day
I will likely not forget
because there’s a song about that, too.