31 days of almost 4:00 a.m.

How can one make January wrong
Or night? The night
Holding the deadly car
In the selfsame palm

As the innocent star of a man.
Or boiling up a sleepless winter plan
To ruin a good son’s life.

The horror too sublime to pen
I’ve lain in ink the sky
Sobbed into the farthest stars
And not tried to move them.

2015

Perfect Birthday

Late April sings my birth in a robin’s throat.
Cheery up, cheery oh!
If I am lucky, and I am, it is Sunday morning.

Always, he’s the warm seam along my southern edge.
We wake and doze, dream and wake,
Gaze, blink and other morning things. Our eyes

Sparkle like coffee, like every other minute
Poured by dawn between us
But drawn out slow like gravity’s honey.

We pad around the kitchen. Children rise.
Each hides a poem
Behind a back, waiting for the moment

To show me what new words have come from ones
Who slid from me three perfect songs
I could never write. I sway and hum along.

2015

Given

Given Walden,
I meant to be alone
From age 15.

I didn’t know Thoreau
Burned down a wood
And loved fine Lydian,
Ralph Waldo’s wife,

And walked with her
In his two years
From time to time.

Given weeks alone
At 43, words do not come.
I drive my skin

To work on winter
Break, type
Dates on a form
And see your face

Before I drift,
Swerve to write
A poem.

2015