Meetings

In college I had a friend
Who’d “live slowly” in the days
Before heading home to Mississippi;
He said it slowed down time,
Elongating the moments he cared about.
Time, being something we can only
Perceive, seemed to comply.
But I would live quickly through
All my loves, my joys and laughter,
I would diminish every intimacy,
Every tenderness and treasure,
Just to knock a second off this meeting
About our time management and
Milestones or whatever other nonsense
Bureaucratic buzz word you’re saying
Right now.

Crows in the fall

Crows in the fall
make their long calls
in three cries
and live, on average,
8 years; so the birds I heard as a child,
from the woods behind the nursing home
where Great Grandma Gow died
are, like her, all dead
ten or more years hence—
while their sad, wise cries
still echo in my head,
and I can still hear my Great Grandma Gow
scold my scrawny other-self
for being a child out of bed;
can feel the hot retort in my chest
even now: that I wanted to see
my parents going to the car.
Before we would leave, my parents
would talk at length in quiet tones
to my father’s parents, as the kids
ran around the lot, and I would caw
back at my friends the crows.




October 2017