Write More Poems

In the old days,
Everyone was a poet for a few months.
Everyone wrote on Steno Pads
With EraserMate Pens with Erasable Ink
Putting their thoughts onto paper
Then removing them effortlessly.

In the old days,
Poets would keep their poems
In a shoebox under their bed
Relishing the idea of their unexpected death
And the aftermath when their old flame
Is handed the box. "You should have these,"
She is told. And then she must keep them forever.

In the old days,
Poems were raw expressions of unrequited lust
Misdiagnosed as love and
Given undeserved Shakespearean weight
As though no one had ever before considered
How the moon laughs at lovers.

If clear eyed, wide awake people
Put on a fully accessorized
Costume to begin each morning,
What should be said to a compliment,
Even though unsolicited, other than
The fact that they put on display
A fully assembled ensemble.
Perhaps they would enjoy
A certain, appreciative delivery,
A small, thoughtful smile
Or, given the state of the world,
We should just be mature,
Walk demurely through the day,
Very, very quietly.

I grew up with bird feeders, brimming
With gray and black sunflower seeds,
Chunky peanut butter for jaunty squirrels,
Suet for birds who hung on wire holders.
Aunt Fran loved back yard flora and fauna
Including her three year old nephew, invited
To live along with her younger sister, Bernadette,
With Uncle Eddie in East Hartford Connecticut,
In a Cape Cod house built after the war;
Welcoming back soldiers and sailors with
Unfinished attics and three foot crawl spaces
For consummate handymen’s skills
Brought to bear with upstairs bedrooms,
Basement workshops with shelves for
Canning the taste of summer in jars.
Perhaps I am the child Fran never had,
A possibility never considered likely
Until this memory of birds and squirrels,
Raising robins who fell from the nest.
Fran wanted her sister Charlotte
To join this familial mix, escape from
Eddie Wlodyka, the Polish narcissist,
In a continuous line from his father on
And on to the old country, where Poland’s
Endless decline was someone else’s fault.
He worked in the ship yards during the war
And wasted away of asbestosis in his mid 70s.
But Charlotte’s escape was into half gallons
Of red Gallo wine on the top shelf of
The refrigerator ready all day every day.

The sun this morning,
Rises over foothills,
Until he can peek through
The peephole in my front door.

I don't understand the physics
That allow him to see
The breadth of my house,
The breadth of my life,
From such a distance,
Through such a small hole.

After a few moments
Of nonjudgemental observance,
He moves on to the next block,
Watchful for more peepholes.

Trying for a glimpse of the awkwardly named comet
(the drier option is C/2011 L4)
I’m down by the river,
staring into the dregs of sunset.
It’s cold, my fingers needle complaints
    why you wanna do this?
    let’s go inside, get warm
A new front steals in slowly
from the southwest,
horsetails moving like minute hands
across the afterglow.

In fact, it’s all clocks and gears,
the cranking of the spheres
the great music box of it;
if our awareness were just a touch slower
we’d be dizzied by the complex motion
—we dust motes in God’s orrery.

Best to perceive in smaller increments,
apprehend only minutiae,
not sense the furious whirring of the machine—
distracted instead by details
like cold hands.