Robert

I learned that
Robert
Was not to depend on
For company at Christmas,
Or raising children or
Planting gardens.

He was to share coffee at dawn
In a strange house
In someone else’s neighborhood;
To jog though the park
In the haze of November
And laugh at a fat lady
On a moped, more because
We had been lovers than
Because she was fat or the
Moped tiny, or gravity unfair.

That is not to say
I did not love him then,
But that I needed to
Fill the empty rooms
I felt forming in my future,
Rooms that could not stay empty
Without spreading into the endless,
Dustless, white desert of a dream
That will not come together
At the end of a night.

The shimmering mist of laughter
Two lovers share beneath the trees
In November will not easily trade
For a family, fat, dull and certain,
And oddly favored by gravity.

Digging A New Flowerbed at the Nursing Home

I stopped to watch
An old shoe surface,
Curled and sickly yellow;
A three pronged fork
And rusty companions;
Bleached and crusted pillbugs;
Two writhing half-worms;
Grave implications of flowers.

January 2

You should have come.
It was cold.
I traced cracks in the cement
Across an empty parking lot.
Arms out, I teetered
Along a curb and down an alley
Where the cracks were full of tar.
I popped tar bubbles there with Debbie
(We popped them with our feet)
In July when we were seven.
I watched a leaf float down the gutter.
In the water I saw clouds;
Trees spidering along the fence;
A blackbird on a post,
Twitching his tail;
My face.
I leaned closer—the blackbird was gone.
I was alone awhile with the clouds
And the trees.
I squashed a puff ball with my heel.
I rolled a Bois d’Arc apple
Through the mud, and threw
A can at old Mrs. Bottigheimer’s dog.
(It hit the fence)
In the water I saw clouds;
Trees spidering along the fence;
A blackbird, on the post again behind me,
Twitching his tail.

You Are a Void Now

You are a void now,
An empty space that cannot be filled,
And I am a lost boy.

We Are Best Alone

We are best alone. We talk to ourselves.
We comfort ourselves.
We don’t judge; we rest.

We kiss the dog on the snout,
We love who we really love,
We hold God in our hands.

Diagnosis

Poetry
A useless religion;
Egghead bread
For spectacled librarians
On lunchbreaks
And coffeebreaks
In January of
Very bad years;
Unprofitable
Non-nutrative
Habit forming
Sweetner
Causing Cancer
In laboratory animals
And possible brain cell
Deterioration
Leading to everyday
Shortness of breath,
Watering of eyes,
Hollowness,
Of heart,
And loss of hearing;
Acuteness of
Life
Under extreme conditions
Bad breath.

Doorway to Springtime

All was color:
Grape hyacinth,
Yellow daffodils,
Row upon row
Of flaming azalea,
Pink and purple
Crocus on a
Background of
Scalding roses,
Twining rung
Upon rung
Of brilliant lattice.
Then through no
Fault of my own,
The door slammed shut
And the sun went out.