Arguing With My Apache Wife
　
　
　
　
Though an awful lot was said
it all held little of value,
like finding half a movie ticket
in my coat pocket -
what am I to do with this?
You must have drunk something
really wild to make you
blister my ears this way
and if this were a movie
I'd have stood up and
left by now since
an awful lot was said
though it all held
little of value.


(... I know, sometimes I
come up with the oddest
titles...)

Sure Footed
　
　
　
　
Shoes like to imagine
they are time tunnels
for the soul, taking us
one step at a time
into an uncertain future,
leading us by the toes
to places we only dream of,
then call deja vu when we arrive;
waiting in thousands of boxes
across this city
like small boats
moored and
waiting for their crew,
we'll go two-by-two
out of the store
and into the sunlight
where our pace
will be a little quicker,
a little more
upbeat,
as if we know
exactly
where we need to be
at this horribly late
hour of our lives.

Women Dressed Like Flags
　
　
　
Women dressed like flags
walk circles around the
track as I ride past the
college grounds, the red
clay pressed under their
New Balance walking
shoes and their hands
clutching water bottles
and cell phones, waiting
for their kids to call that
soccer practice is over,
come get me, then pizza
and a quart of milk at
the convenience store
for tomorrow's breakfast;
if the weather holds
for another day
just the way it has been
they'll be there tomorrow
walking circles and
keeping in between the
chalk lines, their steps
steadily leading them
nowhere over and over
again.

Late Night Jugular
　
　
　
When I've talked enough
to my pillow it begs me
to go to sleep and leave
it alone - it's tired of me too.
Heck, I'm tired of me.
Forty-four years with myself
and nothing new to say
though when I burrow under
the blankets I always tell
myself there is tomorrow,
there is tomorrow, maybe
I'll be so profound tomorrow.

Dessert
　
　
　
　
It is now time for the
west side of these
apartment buildings
to feel the sun's
touch, the day
having already
folded its napkin
and set it down
beside its plate;
in a little while
all the streetlights
and lamplights
will come on
like candles
with dessert,
the moon
a soft curl
of white
chocolate
falling
from the
sky.

A Life Holds Many Years
　
　
　
A life holds
many
years;

a heart
feels
many
beats;

so
why
are we
expected
to love
only
once?

It Just Remains Now
　
　
　
The yellow light of a kitchen
at night is warm and welcoming
while the cold flourescent glare
of a hospital room causes
fear and foreboding

though a person could die
in either place

the heart losing its page
and in a fit of pique tossing
the whole novel of your life
out the window
over a bowl of half-peeled
potatoes

as the faucet's soft drip
murmurs to itself
about who will send
for help

when it's already too late,
the boat has sailed, the
fat lady has sung,
it just remains now
to be seen

who will put out
the lights.

Winter Slows A Poet's Heart
　
　
The moon, Orion,
my little dog, a
pencil and some
paper.

The Dare
　
　
　
　
You know that beyond the lighthouse
is the sea and it would kill you with
impunity yet still you charge the
slippery rocks and cling to the rail
along the path just to reach the edge,
just to climb this man-made thistle painted
in swirls of black and white and stand
at its peak to see the horizon; what
foolish, brave things we do in the name
of being human; how many of us lean
over the height and dare our souls
to take the plunge, almost completely
sure we'll survive the fall, that the rocks
won't be there, that the water will
welcome us, that we'll discover
what was waiting there for us
all along, why did we take so long?

Half-Life
　
　
　
Sometimes the simplest sound
sends you singing back to me
in a rush of memory greater
than any surviving sea;
in the Cretaceous era where
our fingers and hands touch
we become wholly united
and cumbersome and much,
the weight of time compressing
the peat planted in our souls
creating love like diamonds
among the new volcano's coals;
your cheek laid down on stone
while mine lays down on fern,
bathed in the slow decay
that makes reactors burn.

Angry Angels
　
　
　
Angry angels are playing
field hockey in the mud
behind the high school fence
as I walk past thinking how
poetic their passion is,
their white knees below
team shorts bending
and tensing as they rush
toward each other, sticks
ready for the pass,
splashing through puddles
the color of milky coffee
and sludge, each heart
also capable of beating
so fiercely for a man
who will come into their
life someday and be
their whole world, or maybe
some woman, who am
I to judge, love is love
as long as you're happy
and good to each other,
the pack now racing
past me and down the field
toward the goal, half
the mob cheering
the lead they just clinched,
the others leaning separate
and heavy over their legs,
breathless, alive and
wingless.

Fix Me
　
　
　
At the picnic she ran up to me
asking me to fix her shoelace
so I knelt down to five-year old
levels and began working on the
knot in her sneaker while her friends
waited, wondering

how something so simple
can become so tangled and
changed so quickly,

how friendships can fall apart,
how a marriage can wither like a
leaf in November, how life can become
lost in a hurricane of your 40's

until someone comes along
with patience and skilled hands
and so easily undoes all the wrongs
that have been done and leaves you
tied perfect again, ready to run and
spend the rest of your hours happy
and playing in the sun.

Timidation
　
　
　
　
I didn't quite make it
out of the fire in time
so I am an man
reduced to ashes
that you could keep
in a cup on your
windowsill
to look at occasionally
and say
"I remember..."
aloud to yourself
or to your new lover,
my memory just an ember
or maybe the match
that set the loss of me
in motion
long before
we ever first sat down
over a cup of
tea.

You Can Never Have Too Many Crows In A Poem
　
　
　
　
　
You can never have too many crows in a poem.
Then you need a few dozen tall trees for them
to sit in and look down on us disdainfully with their

yellow eyes as we take the trash out to the curb
while they plot how to take over the world.
Maybe it would be a better place if they did,

if it were all theirs, it'd certainly be cleaner I think
as I watch one finish the leftover bits of tuna in
a can while another one eats the last french fries

left behind in a cardboard cup. Using us as slaves
to run the recycling plants I'm sure the world would be
a much different place in a few years, the other birds

joining their regime as we slog along cautiously
under their baleful watch. I read once that if a crow
blinks at you, you'll soon die, and maybe that's

all the signal they'd need to condemn a possible
dissenter, their raucuous laughter filling the air
among the treetops and drowning out our cries,

treetops that weren't even there a few moments
ago until I created them just for this poem,
right here and now, just to make my point.

Most Recent
　
　
　
Tonight the moon's
a small cup
floating in the
deep blue sky.

I folded this poem
up tight and left
it in there for you.

Among all the notes
laid up there through
time, yours is
right on top.

In The Walking
　
　
　
　
This morning I scared away
every bird that I walked past
with my angry boots and
loudly whispered verse,
feeling if I could have no peace
neither could they,
and I believed the feeling
would last me all day;
I would have so continued
all over town but after a few miles
my heart did settle down
and in the walking met
the peace it sought, like an old friend
come out of his house to stop my path
and take my arm until we sat
in some shaded cove with no need
for talk at all, just two companions
that understood, listening to the distant
dove and crow.

In The Walking
　
　
　
　
This morning I scared away
every bird that I walked past
with my angry boots and
loudly whispered verse,
feeling if I could have no peace
neither could they,
and I believed the feeling
would last me all day;
I would have so continued
all over town but after a few miles
my heart did settle down
and in the walking met
the peace it sought, like an old friend
come out of his house to stop my path
and take my arm until we sat
in some shaded cove with no need
for talk at all, just two companions
that understood, listening to the distant
dove and crow.