Ten from thirty (pick of the litter)

APRIL 4
(Guilt)

All the things we can't know,
What babies dream,
Where night begins,
What the moon hears,

Why do we blame ourselves
For people we were along the way?
My sins are small but sturdy,
A missed moment,
A smile held,
A word unspoken a dozen times,
These only wake me at night.

We think we're creator gods
In charge of worlds we've meant,
Able to do better,
All the things we couldn't know
Assail when dreams shake the rafters,
The fact we know better now
Should tell us we're better
Than we imagine.

Let's agree to wake ourselves
From old agreements,
Shake off the could-have-beens,
And let this new day
Shine its own sun.

NINE
(education)

It's important to learn
There's nothing important to learn,

that kid there with his feet in the sand and
his head in the clouds knows everything,
I saw him watch a bee crawl and then the bee took flight,
His mouth went "oh",
And then he drew in the dirt with a stick

TWENTY-TWO
(Earth Day)
Earth, in its extinction,
Now has a day to commemorate
Its once existence,
As each thing we use for our own,
destroys the ecosystem,

We'll atone,
Plant flowers, protest,
write a song,

In our houses warmed and cooled
by fossil fuel.


TWENTY-FOUR
(agenda)
Plans are made to be laughed
into startled submission,
and yet, we plan,
here, there is ample room for improvement,
We walk past moments we recognize
and turn our heads,
aggravating the threads
that tie it all together.

Pay no heed to what has gone,
It's only drift at the edge of
man-made lakes,
Summers come and winters go,
and we age like newscript
in the rain,

Here's the plan,
lean in,
listen to the wind,
it does not have secrets but has seen them,
feel the sunlight as if it is a new thing,
in truth, it has not lived before,

Have you become this weary in one lifetime?
You'll be an infant with troubled eyes,
unless you get this right,
(((there is no right))).

TWENTY-SEVEN
(policy)

Take today, for instance,
Sunlight in the eyes of these golfers,
The Mayor intent on flowers
beside the poison water,

If you squint, you don't see
the crumbling town,
You can focus, instead,
On ravaged hillsides.


TWENTY-EIGHT
(apartment for rent)

Three rooms,
hardwood floors,
tall windows,
nightly boy bands
of the Sweete Shoppe
boom drums against your floor,
coal trucks, lumber trucks,
cattle trucks
drift black fog
against rattled windows,

You can walk among
the coolest small,
they'll judge what manner of who
you might be,
If you are no one to concern them,
this will concern them,

in a sweet little town
with fractured self-image,
trying too hard to be
what it isn't


TWENTY-NINE
(aversion)
A cold rain day
driving spikes
on the train tracks
siphons off
the sizzle
of yesterday's sun,

If we could pull a bit of past
out of this fog,
We'd put on our brogans,
brown faded workpants,
and battered  brown hats,
head down these ties,
breaking ties,

living inside the bars
of everyone knows your name
is a small town prison
we hobos shrug
as the tracks wind
round a corner,
and sleep is a light thing
in the rain.

NUMBER SEVENTEEN
is dedicated to
Mark W. Dooley on our
anniversary:

SEVENTEEN
(Some women make lists)

If I had made a list,
I would have said, "he must be able to carve clothespins
when we live in that cabin
by the woods,
like two folks stranded from the eighteenth century,
pretending the occasional car drifting by... isn't."

I'd say, "he must bring tea in the mornings
when we travel, no matter if it's raining,
no matter how far he has to search
for hot water while the sky is lightly sleeping,"

I'd say, "he must find  for us,
not only a roof to sleep under,
but something on wheels that rolls us
to the next place when circumstances
decide against our staying put."

I'd say "he must help make three daughters,
Goddesses incarnate,
each one perfect and in charge
of her own destiny,"

I'd say, "he must know the value of a tailgate party
outside a convenience store
on dusky summer evenings,
the glamour of old bookstores
beside broken city streets,
and the comedy inherent in
any serious conversation."

If I'd made a list,
these would be on it,
but having not known
any of this before I met you,
I didn't.

(To my Honey on our anniversary: Thanks for hanging around
and being part of this thing
called "us".)

Poems one through five

Poems six through ten

Poems eleven through fifteen

Poems sixteen through twenty

Poems twenty-one through twenty-five
Poems twenty-six to thirty