Each day is a small phrase

in a larger conversation

I seem to be behind in.

I jump the gun

but can never catch up

and my heart is often in my stomach

as I resign myself

to being out of place

and the odd one out.

I look back a little

and wonder how I come up with

the hopeful things,

the messages in moonlight,

the melody of a meadow

when I blink and all is bleak.

Is it question or statement

without punctuation

who can tell

how fitting

it is to travel to a house

that’s yours

just as a mailman’s route is his

or a highway to work is hers

a piece of real estate

not anybody’s

except for all the claims of time

and defined lines

just as an idea is theirs

and they are a they

inside two separate boxes

on a map

but inside one space

of heart that has blurry lines

It’s late and there is snow

resting quietly, taking the night’s moans

and spinning them into sugar.

I am fluffy and warm inside

where it is dark and the fire has gone out

and I am not waiting for whatever’s next.

This is the moment. The dark, the cold,

the inexplicable coziness. This is peace

and I’m not sure how long I can hold on.

It seems I’ve spent years chasing an image

that does not include the grey, aching,

moody wretch I am now- yet… peace?

Stories and diagrams and pictures

all stacked up in my mind or on my table

do not add up to the good I have now.

Yet tomorrow may find me sad and unable

to grasp the good as it flutters around me;

maybe when light has gone again… peace.

I see people moving past my window
and I just want to tell them
there’s no better place here or there;
it’s all the same.

I used to think the sandy beach was
worse than the loamy forest floor,
that the smell of diesel was better
than the faint aroma of ball point ink.

I remember racing to intercept messages
that would get me a beating
but the frantic race did more damage
with all the possible outcomes in my head.

I am slower now and I can’t tell
if it’s my body or my will submitting,
if it’s weariness of age or beauty of grace
allowing me to breathe.

I want to keep asking questions
but I do not need answers;
I am curious about how the air changes
around different feelings.

I wonder if it is worth checking
how the moonlight will strike tonight.

Sometimes when my head is tired
I hide in my car and gaze out the windshield

-my views, my roads, trees
I’ve passed hundreds of times, with
flowering weeds, potholes – and it’s
a strange newness in the same old scene
not unlike roads near the ocean
with detritus of evolution
or across the ocean in towns with
old churches, smaller spheres of family,
greater breadth of history than I can figure
because my ancestors seem to have
risen just in the last hundred years,
or so I’ve been told because I guess
we’re common stock with minimal
vintage appeal.

Blue, like the Picasso or the Monet blues,
I grip my steering wheel
without going anywhere except
in my head because the parking lot
is a great place to hide, a blank slate
to recall houses, dinners, disappointments,
and travel brochures for places
we’ll never go. Leave it to my people
to escape the arid mountains of Italy
and entrench themselves
in Pennsylvania coal mines,
trading salt for soot.
But the radio played the same war
on both sides and I think we just danced,
or at least that’s what I like to imagine
as the acorns hit my hood in the parking lot,
the cadence making me shimmy
in the afternoon.

(after Ginsberg’s poem for O’Hara)