I sit and wonder
Wonder if love was forced
What if love was not real
I love music
May my life be devoted to music
For my music loves me back
I watch couples kiss and dance
A few weeks later
Watching them wanting to kill each other
Maybe love isn't something you should think about
Maybe, just maybe
It should be lost
Never to be touched or seen again
As i walk along the gators track
I see hundreds of worms crawling
Crawling along the rough gravely track
Even though the stadiums empty
I can hear students screaming at the top of their lungs
Standing behind the goal post
I can see football players running passing catching
As i stand under the lights facing the bleachers
I can see a wave of green black and white
The crowd goes wild
You can see a gator sprinting
Towards the end
He makes it
Every one storms the field filled with excitement and joy
Once everyone starts to go home you are finally able to see the bleachers
Filled with plastic bottles
What a funny phrase
Not all of us are living, Some of us are dying
Not all of us like this so called land
Some of us prefer the sky
A vibrant land of adventure and love
Only for a selected few to enjoy
I hope you are selected
It's a short life
For us, for everyone really
Like a snowflake we form, we grow ,we fall
and we melt away
But that short moment of falling is a lifetime
Seeing everyone else fall with you
Unaware of when we will Touch the ground and melt away
It's beautiful, almost peaceful
Almost.
Yet there is the thought
the undeniable truth
The truth that it may look Beautiful but it hurts
When a snowflake falls before you do
It hurts but you haven't hit yet
So grow and fall before you touch that ground
Before you melt away
Anytime you need an extra hour
remember you can do it;
no one will care.
Tell your boss, the teachers at your school,
dentist–whomever–TIME CHANGE!
It depends, as Einstein said,
and hours are anyway makebelieve.
Even sunrise and sunset
are most precarious,
depending as they do on balance,
the fine rim of universal turn.
For the days to be long,
for time to pass slow,
there must be markers of excitement, but
why would I want a comet to fall,
anything but this
My sister and me managed pretty well,
and there weren’t any family around,
so they let us stay on in the house.
I’ve been here ever since.
Married Arthur when I was seventeen,
and he farmed a bit with me when he wasn’t logging,
but he didn’t last too long.
Stepped on a nail and got blood poisoning.
Never had time to have a baby,
and never wanted another man, after Arthur.
My sister left here right after Gram died,
went out west and never came back.
I hear she’s dead now, too.
I’ve kept things up pretty well, I’d say, like Gram did.
Still have hens, the flowers, and pumpkins and beans and that.
I spend all summer out in the yard.
Scraps from every quilt I’ve made,
linoleum blocks, pillows that don’t match
anything but each other
which someday I’ll recover.
Tight ice skates, mildewed ski boots,
The winter sleeping bag
that he promised
would keep me warm.
The print of a scarecrow in a brown coat
that hung above the piano
till I couldn’t stand it any more
even though my father made the frame.
Mother’s Marine Corps scrapbook.
Textbooks from before the Flood
arguing the case for Continental Drift,
books filled with proofs
birches bent in arches filigreed like churches
oak and popple pop and crackle
ash and maple split in time
spruce and hemlock hold together closing like umbrellas
and over all the sharp clear smell of fresh cut pine.
Once rivers limined the stone mountains
with gravel and sand.
Below, the ice-blocked valley;
across, the wild flow of melt.
Three kinds of oak.
Witch hazel and teaberry
undergrow the logged-over
never-plowed land.
So much time,
yet not enough time.
I want to be like a river
on the edge of the ice—
letting go as I can,
holding whatever I must hold.
What is your name and what
do you know and what
together can we do?
Folded, weighted, shifting,
broken and remade,
the layers hidden underneath.
And where on this map
of shifting stone
do we belong?
Come walk and name
this place, this very place,
this weather and these trees:
limestone bluff,
the edge edged with white cedar
—and the rain.
And when the blowdown comes
REPORT: MARCH 8, 2022, 6:30 A.M.
I don’t yet know the news from afar. Here,
the backyard is a sheet of ice. In the low spot
in the drive, the gravel has washed away, leaving
a narrow ditch. Before sunrise, the sky is gray
and yellow. All the undones of autumn poke through
the grubby snow. A rabbit scrounges for seed
under the bird feeder. The dog looks out
the window and begins to scream at a squirrel.
Coffee’s good. The north wind is rising.
There is no Boris in the family tree.
I found the photo in a box in a closet.
On the back, in Nana’s scrawl,
the one word: “Boris.”
A little boy, perhaps two years old,
standing on the seat of a chair against a drapery.
His hair was parted and neat.
He wore a dark jacket and pants,
sturdy shoes.
They’d put a hoop around his neck.
In one hand, he held a stick like the ones
big boys used to turn a hoop along a road.
His expression was puzzled, alarmed:
Why do they want me standing here,
with a hoop around my neck?
So many photos in the box: