My Own Apocalypse

At times, I guess, it was too much for me:

I fled into that ruinous city

Where scaffolds rise, and great roads made of stone

Are cracked by weeds and building sheets of loam.

My sneakers, heels compressed with air, recoil

As I'm launched up. Imperfect as airfoil,

My arms fly out, to stabilize the flight.

Too awkwardly I land up in the heights,

And smack my knee down on a pipe. I stand,

The sunken streets laid out below. Once-grand

Long boulevards and skyscrapers now list

And crumble. I leap out into their midst,

Spring off a standing pillar with one foot,

And let my shoes absorb the force, hands put

In front to catch a railing to steady

Myself. Bright static grows already in

The air: an ion storm billowing to

The west. I'd planned more time to make it through

The city: now I jump down in a rush.

A mound of soil below, my legs thrust

Forward to take the blow: I see too late

The flimsy roof beneath, and easily break

Through. Lying spread under the hole I gaze

Up at the sky. For moments I lie dazed

And lost. Then liquid touches to my cheek,

And I'm awake: so startled, cold, and weak,

I wonder now how long I've been asleep.

The rain is falling through the hole and seeps

Into the littered floor where I now crouch.

Its acid sizzles. I fish in my pouch

For my dried strips of meat. I think I'm stuck

Until the storm blows past. It's more bad luck

After the year I've had. I snuggle in

Among the trash and leaves and my buckskin,

Ignoring thoughts of home and mom, how she

Will wait and worry, will grow more sickly:

And what I'll find when I return. I hope,

And throw my hopes to the kaleidoscope

Of acid rain and blue electric whips

That fill the sky. My own apocalypse.

grace

1.

a bed to call my own, in a state far from my home

2.

these streets to pace, and each small secluded place

3.

a family that's not mine, that treats me as their kind

4.

a driving curiosity, which hands me endless wonders to see

5.

the gift of spring: the waters and flowers that it brings

6.

a circle of allies, drawing close across the miles

7.

this bower of books, a story stuffed in every nook

8.

always food upon the table, abundant soup within the ladle

9.

my love's soft sleeping form, his arms that keep me safe from harm

10.

and the blessing of health: what ludicrous fortune i possess. what wealth.

Osprey's Love Poem

O Love! You are the image of an angel,

Your ev'ry plume outlines a perfect form.

That wing so strong outstretched at softest angle

To beat the air, or fold me to your warmth.

When oft in dawn's pink light I spy your covert,

Which stark stands brown against down's purest white,

I yearn for fleeting moments when you hovered

With talons grasping to my mantle tight.

Too soon my eyes, too sharp, see autumn threaten

When cold will drive us south with all our brood

And you, my dove, when mine own wings grow leaden

May lose me in those lower latitudes.

        Yet winter's parting is not love's finale:

        Come spring, I'll catch you salmon in the Valley.

hosanna to the joys of life

I guess I walked into this one:

even birds will call back to you

if you ask.

maybe I really should have gone home

to ride this out.

if I keep wandering

and discovering

and documenting

all these tiny woods,

and hidden brooks,

and flowered glens,

I really might fall in love –

and that

is no simple task

to climb out of.

life, here & now

have you

ever studied

the interplay

between the wind's ripples,

a soft current's motion,

and the small disruptions made

by a water skater's movements? –

well! –

now

you can.

Wachusett Street

Turning left onto

Wachusett Street, I cross

the unnamed stream.

It tumbles through a culvert

and out again,

almost unchanged,

disappearing

between houses.

Where does it flow?

I hear it running parallel

to the street, along the far

property line. I snuck

through a company's garden

to see it again

back there.

Where does it flow?

I found a confluence

two blocks on

behind the laundry mat

parking lot. Another

smaller

stream arrives, and together

they tumble into

a larger culvert,

a longer darkness.

Where does it flow?

I might have picked up

the path, over

the railroad tracks,

in

some industrial park.

Where does it flow?

On my map there's

a pond, another,

a string of small dams

a tenuous connection.

Where does it flow?

“The Ocean” is

too incomplete an answer.

Where does it flow?

Riffles and Pools

I read once

that a stream's sequence repeats

every five times its width,

when a riffle flows into a pool

and becomes a riffle again.

I've lived life that way,

staring off of bridges to the water below,

or counting careful steps along the stream bed

waiting for the pattern to repeat.

I've eyed the breadth of my days,

thumbed out a rough measurement of how long

it would take, before my riffle settles

before the turbulent waters break

into the flat slow surface

of a pool.

And then, later,

as I see the pillows forming over rocks

and the edge of whiter water laps around me,

I do the same calculations in reverse

trying to quantify how long I have

before the current speeds

and the substrate roughens

and I might stumble under

once again.

I have walked to many rivers, though;

I have eyed their edges and their tops.

I have searched for patterns and solution,

and all I've found is change

and multiplicity.

I would end my fruitless search, except:

the beauty and the joy

the wonder I obtain

from every stream I measure

and every riffle where I've stepped.

crisysalis

Back then, we had only

two goals.

The first, to weather

this smothering maelstrom,

and see

everyone we loved

on the other side.

The second,

to utterly transform ourselves,

so that we emerged

unrecognizable

into that raw, fresh world.

We spun

chrysalises, for both uses,

and waited

to see what would change.

Beside You

I dream for weeks of these long nights, when I sleep beside you.

But tell me, my love: am I a shadow that you keep beside you?

I trace your footsteps through forests, down old cobbled streets:

Echoing the rustle of old women’s skirts, I sweep beside you.

Once you trace dark constellations, they’re all I can see in the sky.

If you leapt to fly towards these stars, would I leap beside you?

I’ve seen your summer pied piping, the intoxications you cause

Your powerful words gathering a flock of sheep beside you.

These thoughts press on my head, like the weight of the sea.

A small ocean of bitterness: I’m immersed deep beside you.

Pressure becomes silence. But I think so loud, you must know:

I lie still in the night, longing for you to hear me weep beside you.

Forgive me, my love. I envy your straight back, your clear strength.

Only a coward would ask you to carry these fears I heap beside you.

Your presence can crack, a light streaking down from the clouds –

But me, so earthbound and small; it’s only Lydia who creeps beside you.

After filing my tax return

at midnight,

I keep the light on

and sit staring into space.

It has been a bad day.

“You’re the only person

I know, who categorizes

your days: good and

bad,” they once

told me. I forget

if I told them,

I do it with weeks, too,

with months, years.

(2014 was

written right off.)

“When I’m

in a relationship,

I write it all down,”

I told

my old friend yesterday.

“That way maybe I

can learn something,

later.” We laugh. A joke.

She says it’s the same with

Bad Things, you have to

write them down, so you

can know. I agree.

But at least for me

that’s a joke too. (2014

is scarcely a dozen pages.)

My pen and keys are

speechless for weeks,

because I sit here with

the light on instead,

because I never want to write when

it has been a bad day.