Poem a day 2015: 23

Waiting for It

I’m waiting for the poem to come to me,

looking out the window into slow moving

clouds over the gently waving branches

of a still-leafless tree, marking two pelicans

as they dive from the white into the blue,

flapping in tandem, tracing big circles

across my vision.

The birds this morning

shouted from the bare trees, promising

warmer weather, the eventual arrival of

summer: silky hot skies, flowering shrubs,

the hiss of cicadas stretching the air wider.

I’m waiting for the poem to come to me,

stretched out on my chaise under two

layers, skin still vaguely chilled by the

retrograde weather, the crisp wind,

frozen mud flavored by yesterday’s

mocking snowflakes.

I’m waiting for it

to burst onto the scene with trumpets

and tigerlilies, with explosions of leaves

and clusters of cottonwood seeds borne

in puffs across the river trail, with dandelions

like punctuation marks across every lawn --

I’m waiting for the naked summer poem

to arrive and demand we strip off all these

heavy clothes, run across hot sidewalks, and

dive into each other with sweaty abandon.

Poem a day 2015: 22

Dreaming of You, Dad

Amazing how, now that you’re gone,

I think of you more and more often,

and you enter my dreams with some

regularity -- a strong, slim presence

such as you were in the sixties, before

the stresses of academia and fakery,

the pressures of fatherhood and family,

inflated you with anger and despair.

I can’t quite recall your words as you

offer casual opinions about world affairs

and my ongoing place in them, or advice

for navigating a position in administration

with a modicum of grace, despite the

hidden snakes and the open haters

(you’ve figured out, it seems, that

I’m slated to move into it in August),

but I do remember your sweet smile

and the shine in your eyes, warm now

with love and appreciation. I can even

reinvent, like the afterscent of smoke

soaked into my clothes, the feel of your

strong arm around my shoulders and

the rub of your hands down my skin

as you pull me in against you.

These dreams reassure me. It seems

you are indeed in a better place. But

they also make me sad -- to know that

some of us have to die in order to love.

Poem a day 2015: 21

Lately an Odd Calm

lately an odd calm

possesses me

settles my insides

into perfect order

stills the thought whirl

that once agitated me

so that i fit perfectly

inside my skin

-- it’s a strange feeling

this equanimity

as if i’ve finally found

the proper orbit

around the proper sun

and gravity has

found me

at last

Poem a day 2015: 20

Poem for Lizzie

a long time ago

you used to bull your head

against my ribs

press your feet into

my backbone and

bend me like a bow

from the inside

you were so big in me

i couldn’t tie my shoes

couldn’t get behind the wheel

of my car

strangers in the supermarket

stopped their carts in front of me

to shout: don’t have that baby here!

and 5 year old seth asked:

how’s your baby

going to get out?

i wondered that too

of course

woke up with every fiber of me

on fire with you

and wondering

how the hell you were going

to get out of me

hard to believe you’re now

a woman

and taller than me

ready to launch yourself

into the wide world

beyond our house

fixing your sights across

this country

to a western state

we’ve only visited once

every day i wake up

with the truth of your

impending departure

pushing behind my eyes

and i have to find you

look at you

to make sure

you’re still here

that your story hasn’t started

without me

Poem a day 2015: 19

Spring Cleaning

I’m incompetent in the garden,

digging up flowers or raking them,

when they’re tender April shoots,

into chewed bits. My neglect

encourages three foot high thistles

and nightshade and skunk weed,

and the Snow on the Mountain I planted

under the cedar over 13 years ago

has colonized half the backyard.

I let dried leaves take over the beds,

am indifferent to pruning,

have no idea when to plant bulbs,

and allow squirrels to transplant

the neighbor’s daffodils to our lawn.

My surviving flowers and shrubs

cling to life despite me, struggling

in ragged non-rows, competing with

dandelions and three year old mulch.

About once a year, I head out and

tackle something with haphazard zeal.

Today, I raked beds, retrampled

mulch, rearranged the puffs of leaves

around the bottoms of the bushes,

got something stuck in my thumb

that’s still bugging me, pulled a few

weeds and left them piled on the porch,

couldn’t get the weedkiller to squirt,

pushed some bent metal “holders”

around the incipient peonies, and

then put all the tools away before

noting the pile of leaves on the back

patio that will no doubt remain there

for another twelve months.

Poem a day 2015: 18

This Neighborhood

With its postage stamp lawns, row

after row of them,

the grass now a mottled green and yellow

where years of dog piss

have burned past the roots,

and the arching maples,

some splitting in half, rotten

at their cores,

roots gnarled around themselves,

suffocating under cracked concrete,

maples spitting whirly seeds

into our clogged gutters

and down into our weedy flower beds,

here and there a fresh stump

in the middle of sprayed sawdust,

and our houses -- peeling stucco,

faded plastic siding,

ripped awnings

banging against front porches

in a wind

that pushes dried leaves

and half built robins’ nests --

crowded up against each other,

knocking elbow to elbow,

this neighborhood sheds another

winter skin

and blows it up

with dust

into the still-cold sky

where planes fly low

and away,

dragging their silver bellies

over our roofs

like missed wishes.

Poem a day 2105: 17

I Can’t Write a Proper Poem Today Because

my skull is shrinking

the dog is barking

someone somewhere is cutting down a tree

my muscles hurt

my knees feel unhinged

my boobs are flashing with strange electricity

people keep sending me emails

about meetings and

giving me new homework assignments

i think the washing machine just shut off

which means I have to figure out

how to pull myself

off this sofa

drag myself down into the basement

and load the dryer

I left my cold meds at school

when I cough it feels as if I might yak out a lung

I have a ton of grading yet to do

there’s a headache in my neck

the dog won’t settle

my feet are cold

i might be disintegrating

and atom after atom

rejoining the universe