My window is blocked by
an enormous vinyl
advertisement
for a red
cocktail dress.
If you’re looking up
from the street,
I am right behind
the left breast,
shameless as a blood fluke.
When the sun strikes it
at 3:00 in the afternoon,
the room fills
with evening
& I raise the window
to listen to it
First warm day.
I sit in the shade closing one eye
then the other.
This phoebeing—
even the pants on the line
seem to get the rhythm.
Vicious groundhog fight.
The victor stands still & lets the flies
land on his face.
Fur in the air—
the cattails
are shedding.
As slow as spring
on the half-naked dead elm,
a fox squirrel’s tail.
The vulture’s shadow
Its nut reburied,
the squirrel moves quickly away
& pretends to forage.
Half of the turkeys
run one way & half the other.
I turn in circles.
On the night we have to set
the clocks ahead,
the rustle of earthworms.
We search the sky
for the whistling woodcock.
Nothing but the moon.
In the bathtub this morning,
it’s the first wolf spider
of spring!
I am for the roadside rather than the road.
I am for the one who announces
rather than the one who is announced.
In the middle of a ballet, I am the fly
rubbing its hind legs together
on the collar of a coat.
I am a friend to those who curse
when they’re happy
& sing when they’re sad.
And when someone places a hand
like a hot iron on some starched bible,
I am with those who blush
& stare at their feet.
Like a snow flea,
wingless but spring-loaded,
its only defense being to launch itself
in a random direction,
but which sometimes ends up
right back in the same spot.
Which absorbs moisture through
a life-long feeding tube in its abdomen
& breathes directly through its thick skin.
Whose blood contains an antifreeze-like protein
that may turn out to have commercial applications
in ice cream & the storage of organs for transplant.
Which joins a million others of its kind
in late winter — cabin-fever time —
for mass migrations across
the frozen Serengeti of the woodlot,
For a day and a half, due no doubt to the rain and snow squalls, high-speed internet access here on the mountain varied from brief and intermittent to non-existent. I was forced to resort to dial-up, where it can take half an hour to complete the simplest task. No chance then of my attention leaping from site to site; I became as slow and single-minded as an autumn cricket.
When I step outside, mid-afternoon,
my quilted shirt turns white
with sudden pixels.
I blink like a cursor.
All the dried goldenrod heads
are blossoming into a second, ghostly life.
Clear and very cold.
I hear squirrel teeth
on walnut shell.
The Carolina wren’s happiness motor
turns over once, twice, then putts to life.
Dear Dana,
I climbed the ridge to look for a poem
& came back with supper instead:
five pounds of chicken mushroom,
freshly sprouted from the end of a log
& dripping with moisture.
A couple of rove beetles scrambled
in & out of fissures as I began
breaking off hand-sized fans
& nestling the boneless yellow flesh
in a shopping bag. In this supermarket,
the shelves themselves are edible.
Red letters on the bag said
THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU
Have a Nice Day.
No porridge here!
Everything is always
just right.
Times & temperatures are set
by central decree.
They strain the plankton from the fryers
once a shift.
Here, you have choices.
You can pick a different
transnational brand of transfat
for every course.
You serve yourself — who better? —
in bucket-shaped seats.
Discrimination has no place here;
there’s room for everyone
with six dollars in their wallet.
A shoehorn’s a sort of
spoon-shaped chute
for the foot,
not for the shoe.
Or at best, a social lubricant
between the two,
with or without
the Freudian interpretation.
Boots are for those
who toot their own horns,
sporting as we know
the handy bootstraps,
which give the so-called
self-made men
a better metaphor for rising
to their own occasion.
Eyes front, soldier.
The general looks hard for signs
of deviation.
Don’t show too much interest
even in this poem,
which is probably gay.
There were trees here once
where you stand relieving yourself
against a hollow trunk.
They would not have known
what to do
with so much saltpeter.
You need a key for entering where there is no door.
You are much too full of your mammal self
to fit through the always-open entryway
& in any case would have no idea
how to execute a waggle dance,
which looks like sun-drugged madness to you,
looming over the brood box with your angry halo.
You need the hive tool — a burglar’s jimmy —
to prize the honey-heavy frames
from the super, where they hang
for all the world like file folders,
an archive of everything that blooms.
You bring your smoker, of course,
stuffed with straw you pilfered
from some poor scarecrow.
With tear gas & face shield you come,