But It’s Never Like That

If you had to make a life
Out of spare hours in public
Spaces where you knew no one,

Laminate-table fast-food
Joints on empty Saturdays
In interstate exit towns,

Public parks, hikers’ trailheads
Grey days in offseason,
City squares full of tourists,

Well-seasoned with pickpockets
And a pinch or two of cops,
You could and be contented

When the body didn’t throb,
And the mind wasn’t haunted.

Stone Quiet

Makes sense, you know
What it should mean.
Usually,

Stone is quiet.
Of course it quakes,
Sometimes, sometimes

Heats itself wet,
Drools fire, curls lips.
Very rarely

It falls screaming
Out of the sky,
And you’re never.

And No Real Forest Since Compared

There were so many trees
Around that place, all tall
To a small eight-year old,

Oaks with mysterious
Color codes that didn’t
Correspond to their bark

Or leaves a kid could see,
Various kinds of pines,
Other deciduous

Second-growth pillared crowds.
It seemed like a forest,
All few acres of it,

To a child who’d never
Been in a real forest.

A Novel Way to Live

A preferable existence
Would be to be a reader who
Loves novels, lives novels, lives them
But never finishes a one.

Every story starts, bright or dark,
A new life in another world,
And not one story ever ends,
Just breaks off into a new one,

And no matter how difficult,
How obscure, how disappointing,
How tragic any story is,
There’s always another waiting,

Which is what the novel reader’s
Life could be, if you could live it.