Tuesday, November 7

equivocation

Milling about as if--
there's nothing better to do
nothing we could be accomplishing
we chose to stand in the heat
our children irritate us on purpose
life is a useless tract of time
meaning is meaningless
--but none of it,
hear me, none of that,
is so.



9/2/23

celebration



the sad executive
upon promotion, drank heavily
robbed of his resentment.
what now? happiness?
not from seeds of such rich malaise.
cups empty, thoughts wild
he dreams of moving on
stray visions of mountain poetry
while practicing false smiles for the meeting.




9/2/23

dad


Name it
or don't--
anxiety clawing a hole in my chest
oh that's trite, isn't it?
Mosquitos slinking around, landing:
not sure why I'm like this
maybe I could sleep it off,
maybe that would make it worse.
Do loud noises set it off
cacophony of happy childhoods
or autocorrect, say everything twice:
I might be a good parent
but do I hate parenting? I think I do.
Endless interruption
endless interruption
endless interr--
try not to be short with the little ones.
I'm having an anxiety attack.
I don't have time to but I am:
the questions don't ever stop so
I guess I'll have this crisis later.
Sure kid, let's play
Dad
Dad
hey Dad
Dad?
Dad. Dad. Dad.
Dad--
Dad
There's a scream in my throat
I'll let it out when I'm fifty maybe
or from the grave.



8/21/23

Sunday, October 29

retreat


the lethargic urgency of wooden folding
chairs in the Christian retreat center
every group that visits thinks some other group
must usually be here, but they aren’t
and at puberty i remember stealing glances
in that different place, different time, at Emily
sure i’d say or do the right thing Here but i never did

one night after dark they had a bonfire by the lake
we teenagers kept playing volleyball after sunset
someone, maybe me, found the floodlight switch
but kept stealing glances through deep blue grays
from Here to where the winking orange flames
silhouetted our adults; i worried mostly about bears
even though i felt a little shame

my children are approaching that age now
while the Peter Pan in me assesses: good kids, but
maybe too tender. Here, take my hand
we can fly right over most of this, stick with me
but when the lost boys pile into sleep i sit alone
stealing glances at a past that doesn’t even exist

as if i could wait
for a different story
to begin



10/29/23

Friday, October 27

Flying at dawn on the Eastern Seaboard




Some want from lovers what I want from big machines
violent ones, loud enough to kill me, during takeoff
“fuck me up,” then “not really,” then
“just scare me”—

The white barn in the field
looking rural, out-of-place
holds tractors for the airport, I guess
but looking at it, rising from the runway, I think
of myself approaching it, grass dew on my boots
beginning a dirt-scented day filled with sky

I awake and the clouds are a soft floor just beneath us even though it might be hundreds of feet and then it drops away to endless empty space and rumpled ground twenty thousand feet below us and even though it was only my gaze that screaming plummeted to its death in that moment, I am suddenly and viscerally aware of this frail curtain between myself and death: a cloth so thin I can peer through it.

I awake and the sun is slipping over mountains and winking back at me very brightly from some large flat object in the distance that can only be a cliff: the buildings everywhere else are dwarfed by its huge reflecting surface. Later I see cliffs in a snaking string along the path of some river whose name I’ll never know, every one bursting with sunlight.

I am awake and the sun has risen almost everywhere now except for the western sides of mountains, where it is still early dawn and the light has not made it over that nearby steep horizon. It is beautiful and it happens every day, it has been happening and will for thousands of years, long after the ground has forgotten these little farmhouses still waiting in delay for sunrise.

I am awake and the sun is inflaming towering columns of smoke from factories, four fetuses in a row rising from the floor to spread out and dissipate and never even approach their grand sky brothers drifting past. I see this from above them all, looking down, and then I look up and there are more clouds above us too.

I am awake and suddenly aware again that every wave of light to meet my eye does so to complete a journey unimaginable in length: from the depths of space to that brilliant shining lake and then—as nothing, as if it were nothing at all—back up through lethal empty atmosphere, piercing airplane glass to find me. Any part of which would kill me; would kill any of us; all beyond our frail and mortal shells, is light.

Sometimes I push forward with a terrific roar
slipping from my seat, held back
only by a belt or grip I keep:
invisible forces thrusting me onward.
We try not to ask
what if this life slipping behind me
runs out of room to land?

There are secret paths amid the trees
patterns in the field you only see from air
idly I wonder where they lead
what caused them, was something there
but once aground they vanish from my mind.



10/27/23