Cages

Memory can be sweet
but hope is a cage
no less than fear.
Perhaps when I am old I will learn
to accept each moment for itself:
to experience, then relax
placid as a pool
neither expect another drop
nor fear the drying sun & wind—
but simply Be, content as Now
and then contain by innocent reflection
the sky & trees beyond.

December 2019

the train in her den

what is an empty train station
but a tiger pacing in her den
and we are insects who watch, irrelevant—
the train comes like hunger
making huntress out of mother;
the shaking world
braced by its iron beams
sacrifices prey to appease the moment
and the silent cat returns,
red-mouthed
to wait and pace again
within her den

December 2019

night streams

the Moon must be alone
to flick her ash into a stream:
unformed thoughts
alone of all the powers
violent enough to dissolve a single spoken word.
does any language lack solitude, she asks
of herself—as a concept, as a thought?
as a word?
then to the Sun
she offers prayers
when she cannot be alone
with anyone but him.

December 2019

The future's birth

After the explosion, of course
it is hard to get my bearings;
to tell if I am whole, or safe, or
alive. I can hear only one
high monotone inside my head,
shutting out the noise of Earth.
My glasses are missing, and
my first thought is—can I undo
the last few seconds? Try again?
Then the solace of movement:
stumbling over pavement, aghast
but pretending as always that
I’m not really surprised or alarmed.
Busily, I act the part: assessing damage,
picking pieces up, looking around,
as if making sure danger has passed
and I can now recover from it. But
I'm not really here; my mind looks 

far away, plotting as a ship's course

the changes that will follow this:
the future’s strange new shape
now forced upon it like a mold.
All this in an instant; but also
later, in the silence of an empty room,
days or decades later on. The fog
which obscured that panicked second
in its moment—preserved it, too:
a snapshot of my own ended different life
and the moment of birth for this.

December 2019

Pittsburgh trains

Behind the hills in Pittsburgh there are trains
hidden on forgotten tracks.
I can’t recall the roar
of their polished wheels on rusted rails;
and my memory of their sight belongs
to Midwest plains: long arcs
curving across a yellow field to the horizon.
But their long sobs linger in the valleys;
I hear a clouded Pittsburgh afternoon
with the trumpet call of every engine
which mourns with me
and invites me home.

December 2019

Thin horizon

The thin horizon despises me
its perfection an open insult
to my flaws and shortcomings
dreadfully immediate and distinct;
and yet upon that distant shore
across this same divide: another soul
peers at my indistinct surroundings
and judges himself by this thin line,
his own perfect horizon despising.

December 2019

Adults, at three

They are little seeds
of forty-something human beings
with bank accounts and stresses,
tensions carried in their shoulders
like the capes they wear this year.
They are unbridled explorers
whose map is shrinking every year,
who haven’t learned what satellites
have done to the field of cartography;
and in uneducated enthusiasm
believe the upstairs is a cavern
filled with mystery, adventure, surprise.
They are criminals
whose disregard for law is borne
out of supreme regard for self,
who knows no master, nor claims
mastery over any other: it was here
so I put it in my hands and used it,
not as an insult, but simply
never considering what it meant,
because what could toothpaste mean,
ever, even fingerprinted on the wall?
There is no innocence or guilt;
no delight nor disappointment,
no irresponsibility nor freedom—
for we have not taught them yet:
The world has not yet mustered
the cruelty and joy required
to crack these seeds,
and let them grow.

December 2019