Unremoved snow
on his sidewalk.  His Camry
buried to the fenders
but slowly melting free.

Where’s the old man?
He hasn’t made
his daily grocery run
for at least four days.

And surprised, too,
that he didn’t get out to vote.
Maybe
he got a ride?

We look across at his house
and the drawn blinds.
Shrug, figure he’s OK,
maybe waiting for spring.

(for D.G.)

“There is no object so foul but that intense light cannot make it beautiful.”  — Emerson

When we were young we stood too close to each other
to let light in. We huddled with our eyes closed.  Saw
everything by touch. Knew ourselves and each other
only by the feathers of our breath.  Called
the dark our day and were done with it,
called in pain, named ourselves frustrated,
could smell nothing but our wasted potential.

The details we did not see then
stand up for themselves now, declaring
that we were sculptures.  We aren’t the shadows
we accepted then, never were; we were full
and solid, palpable through our eyes if we had tried.

We could not have known this then,
but now, only now, now that distance
and day allow us to pore over our fragile
and mobile pasts, can we scan the slippery
and live velvet of what we were.  Not foul,
not terrible; back then we were so lovely
as to stop time itself.  It stops now
for us, now that we can see.  We can say it:
we were enough, were beautiful,
and we would have known that then
if we could have stepped away from ourselves
long enough to let the light come in.

I wish my arms
were donkeys
pulling carts
full of children laughing
or produce to the country market
in a land without pickup trucks.

I wish my legs
were lungfish
making do in hard times
with air or water
as needed, or that they could crust up
and wait.

Wish my cheeks
were stuffed with mussels
because my mouth was a tide pool.

Smell that, the wet musk
of inhuman kindness?
I long to smell like that —

unconscious and fun, doing
the simple thing,  abundant
with no plan.

My
overworked brain screams
protest.  “Don’t deny me,
you asshole!”  Fuck off, brain.

I’m in love with not thinking tonight —
I fall asleep,

wishing I were a sloth,
home to algae and slow calm,
dreaming of a celery beard,
breathing over
a morel tongue.

I keep thinking
it’s going to stop
suddenly,
in pretty much the way I used to hope
the preacher
would stop pounding the pulpit
with his fist to strike a pose
with a long finger pointing
out at the congregation
at the breakthrough moment
where the souls are saved
and brimstone gives way
to ambrosia.

Sermon after poisonous sermon —

unworthy,
useless,
failed son,
fallen —

I always hoped
for a phrase
or a line to redeem me
before them all.

But the service ground on
with me unremarked
for direct salvation.
Always the implications, nuances
to chide me on, drive me deep
into the bench, sinking down.

If I was still
a praying man,
I’d be on my knees right now
for silence.  On my knees,
hoping to awaken
in the arms of peace.
I gave that up a while ago —

instead I think about stealing the Bible
and tossing it into a bonfire.
Nothing to hear there,
nothing worth trying,
not a second time.

Don’t set off any earthquakes
or supervolcanoes tonight.

If the world is going to end,
I want to be awake when it happens.

There will be something to see
in those last seconds

before the curtain tumbles around us
laden with stone and flame,

and I just know I’ll be the one
compelled to capture it

and cram what little sense
could be made of it into words

no one will read, but dammit,
I’ll try, and I would like

a good night’s sleep before I face that,
thinking of good things to do in my future.

It’s not much to ask, I think,
to want to be at my best when the worst happens.