If It’s Real

Late autumn afternoon sun
Through dust spots on house windows,
Turning the fake stucco blond,

A flycatcher stops hopping
Along the porch to study
Your shadow inside the walls,

Seems to decide you’re harmless,
And goes on hopping along.
Gold. The afternoon. Golden,

Soon to disappear, but so?
What if it’s real? This really
Is how dying goes for you,

An increasing frequency
Of pain in unpainted days,
A sense, not of loneliness,

But of fecklessness, the worth
Of the moment well-worshipped
As now as now worth nothing,

No reason at all, loose ends,
A sloppy demonic deal
With the devil for some peace

You needn’t lunge after, seize
Foolishly out of the air, since
Peace was always, sort of, there.

Keep It

Here is where you wanted to get to.
Precious little’s being asked of you.
You have supplies meant to keep you well.

The obvious paperwork’s been filed.
You still have a job, obligations,
But they’re far more minimal than most.

It’s quiet in here, sunny out there.
There are hours for you to sit and stare.
It would be a good time not to think

Too hard about what’s needed of you.
There’s a breeze through windows from trees
That nod affirmatively—it’s yours.

Right now, whatever’s been happening,
It’s yours, this that can’t be kept, to keep.

What Would Be Most Useful to Do

So much of life you lived with the rest
Of your life in your thoughts, on your mind.
Memory returns to a marble

Baluster you recall as smooth stone
As you walked past on your way from class,
Considering, where would you land next?

In what country or part of this one
Should you start your career?
Back then, futures always came with plans,

And there was always some strategy
Or daydream passing for strategy
About what steps would be cleverest.

Memory returns as boys smoking
Stolen cigarettes around a fire
In a drab campground, What will you be,

What will you become? A roadrunner
Strides to the window-door in the sun
That is the most recent happening

And peers in at you, safe from the cats
Stuck upstairs for too long. Memories
Of their own must haunt all these lives some.

But every time you remember you,
You not only dredge up past but past
Futures you remember, absences

That finally strike you now as strange,
Given they flicker and sputter out,
And you can’t think what would be useful.

Last Lace of Self Somewhere

So they die, and their days die,
Or go, let’s say, go, going
Being key feature of death,

Trying to recall their minds,
Which are busily learning
Life with less recollection.

They fade out of their presence,
Absences in their own work,
Or the work stops. Less and less,

And their fans rarely notice,
That the voices they cherished
Rarely spoke out near the end.

That’s the work you’d love to find,
Lace of self lost to new mind.

History Seeping into the Meadow it Made

This day can’t not become that
Day that will never exist—
Then it becomes that, and you say,

Hey, here it is, this day is existing,
But it isn’t, not as that day that couldn’t
Not become, never existing.

You peruse this day’s news, read history,
Biography, memoirs. Push your thoughts
Like corkscrews into the boards.

You won’t live to see it, but that day
Will come, the stable one, since this day
Can’t not become that day that wasn't.

Garden Gate on a Windy Night

This swinging gate’s not helping much.
From your shoulders you’re behind shoved
Further out, while the gate itself
Slaps you back in the neglected

Garden, and here you are, certain
Kind of not-work-work around you,
Along with the sense that you need
To be more clearly meaningful,

Yet also letting the world’s cape
Finally slide off your shoulders.
The one you want’s the nothing much
That’s more than ready for nothing.

You need to work on your timing—
Hang back when the end wind’s strongest,
And then rally to make a dash
Home as life slams shut behind you.

The Salvage Operation

There was a hiking trail,
Threading the city park’s
Meandering third growth

Woods. Here and there, flat rocks
Made good ledges. You spent
Many hours on that trail,

Most sitting and thinking.
Trying to be all there,
To feel, This is enough.

Whenever you came back,
You felt you almost felt
What you tried to have felt.