Thursday happy hour
tabletop, sticky with beer
a saint, undisturbed

Bus driver, stone-faced
under a handlebar ‘stache
lets the cyclist live

Power, knowing that
you never get this moment
to regurgitate

“I am still freezing”
from Tolstoy’s summation of
his Russian winter

That someone would come
along but no, really you
have to save yourself

Seahawks umbrella
shredded in spikes by the storm
then the wind steals it

The can tumbles west
the wind blows it back uphill
a boy’s first memory

I sprout my father’s grin
his sad smile upon my face
when it all goes wrong

Lone crow with acorn
ignores its murder across
from the pot clinic

No one notices
as I brush the moth beneath
the neon “OPEN”

A smaller moth darts
through that left front burner coil
one pot on to boil

Black bird on red ball
fifty feet out in Green Lake
preening for balance

To dirty our hands
on this salutorious
sticky universe

Bright but cold, again
Steam escaping a laundry
First day of autumn

Gave myself credit
for the light burning upstairs
but that’s mostly luck

Water from the well
oscillating in its pail
summer’s shortest night

I want to believe
droplets slouching for the drain
oblige all I ask