amiss

if i had not been
so scared, so sad, so spiteful,
i would have asked you.

altercation

interestingly enough, it was the newscaster
who started all the fuss about whether i ate
your yogurt or whether you remembered to
buy any in the first place (because i definitely
finished off some yogurt, but i could have
sworn it was mine and you know we like
the same brand), when she said we should
“stock up” and “hunker down” because this
was going to be “the big one.” i guess
that’s when you started towards the fridge
and i towards the pantry, some automatic
tendency to survey the damage and see what
must be done, but we were both afraid. it is
a frightening thing to take inventory and to
imagine, “could i live on this?” (one wonders,
for how long? inside one’s head, one replays
all the haiti coverage, the videos of katrina and
of tsunami aftermath.) i remember we turned
to face one another across the long linoleumed
hallway, eyes wide to the semi-luminous mostly-
dark and flickering space of television on white
walls and a low ceiling. i struggled but could not
decide whether you were estimating the strength
within a comrade or the weaknesses of a potential
competitor. our eyes were wide. the yogurt, i
suspect, metonymously stood for all the doubts
we have thus far ignored concerning one another
and it begged for some response that would have
had nothing to do with who ate what, some
superseding gesture of validation: an opening
of some sealed place in my heart, an offering
of my precious gluten-free granola, a making
and remaking of love that might acknowledge
the fact that i do not do all things well and have
been known to eat foodstuffs that are not mine.
i sensed all this, but did not know what to say.

beginning

unlock old secrets:
balsam, hyssop, myrrh released
among the grey tombs.

dial

shadows don’t tell time.
time tells them: where to fall, how
fast, and whom to love.

pruned

most trees survive, while
death comes for the mistletoe,
rootless in the frost.

routine

we’re all glancing outside hoping for
a break in the clouds. production
and efficiency measure out each day
into chunks of professional development,
bounded on every side by bad coffee
and smoke break gossip among those
of us who plan to get the most out
of our medical benefits plan, braving
the cold and the carcinogens just to
make contact with other human. just to
say we did it. something inside of me
keeps wishing for being to crash its way
noisily through the cubicles and copiers
and endless calendars of becoming, like
a spaniel tumbling through a tedious
round of chess or monopoly, nevermind
that it will be impossible to remember
just how it went or what were my next moves:
here are the eyes of insight and a great
heart. that’s what i’ve been missing. a little
slapdash. a little, sudden earnestness.

stuck

in the dream i woke;
i kept waking (tense, alone)
again and again.

when i woke at last
i believed it wasn’t real,
but then it was cold

and i was coughing,
the distant light of winter
beginning out east.

i am still lean and independent, with a nice face

see them? those people are like sandbag animals
(or sawdust or gravel, i don’t exactly know),
playthings that eventually lost their certain shapes
and physical integrity from being handled roughly.
they were made from leftover materials, never
pretending to have been anything other than that.
what’s more, they weren’t ever concerned with into
whose hands they were placing themselves, every time.
aging, for them, was more a question of looking
more and more like pillows found in cheap motels
than of gaining any wisdom, austerity, respect, honor.
but now i recognize that this was a gift they gave
one another. i only wish i had seen it sooner; i wish
someone had shown me how happy they would be.

january dark

you’re coming home soon.
tucked away beside the stove
i read, wait, stay warm.

(how late is it now?
don’t check. just make more coffee.
sit still. soon soon soon.)

there’s something about
the headlight beams: when they come,
they both seem so sad.

by the shore

just as the days were shortening noticeably
but before the sun had lost its power to make
us shrug off our jackets while sitting down
on the dead grass on a clear weekend
near the eager dogs who would run and run,
that was when i felt most hopeful. the sheet
on which we squatted seemed good enough,
winter seemed like an interesting experiment,
and all my decisions seemed just and right.
now the ache of the cold has got into my bones.
all the small hopings washed away and left
faint stains of hurt, each one a sort of
highwater flotsam: this and that, picked over
by the birds, mostly faded trash and foam.