Coming Home
First, there is the mail,
a sea serpent of mail
that slithered through the slot,
oozed across the foyer and
down the stairs
seeking the depths
where dwells the unspeakable
catalog.
The voicemail next:
importunate, insistent
robotic cheer--
politics, prescriptions,
sales, reminders
of missed opportunities
and appointments
preying on the guilty
conscience.
Last, the list
assembled on the plane:
the flotsam and jetsam
generated by departure,
postponed calls, deferred bills,
the pieces you’d hoped
would go away if you
closed your eyes
and lulled the inner voice
(your responsible self)
with dinners and music,
plied it with drinks
and seduced it with sun.
You were a world away:
you’re back now, Sisyphus,
and life goes on.
Squirrel and I
We are digging frantically
he and I
burying things in cold, cold dirt:
he, acorns; I, pansies.
He’ll forget, in winter’s blast,
exactly where he stashed them
will rummage and search
the beds in much the same fashion as I
forgetful, rummage for my keys.
I at least know where my pansies are.
And in spring, equally astonished,
we prize our little resurrections:
Pansy faces grin in surprise,
broken free
from frozen burial
and his unintentional seedlings smile
sunward: incipient trees
with promise
of autumn fruit.
Acorns and pansies.
The cycle of
life eternal.
a sea serpent of mail
that slithered through the slot,
oozed across the foyer and
down the stairs
seeking the depths
where dwells the unspeakable
catalog.
importunate, insistent
robotic cheer--
politics, prescriptions,
sales, reminders
of missed opportunities
and appointments
preying on the guilty
conscience.
assembled on the plane:
the flotsam and jetsam
generated by departure,
postponed calls, deferred bills,
the pieces you’d hoped
would go away if you
closed your eyes
and lulled the inner voice
(your responsible self)
with dinners and music,
plied it with drinks
and seduced it with sun.
you’re back now, Sisyphus,
and life goes on.
Squirrel and I
he and I
burying things in cold, cold dirt:
he, acorns; I, pansies.
He’ll forget, in winter’s blast,
exactly where he stashed them
will rummage and search
the beds in much the same fashion as I
forgetful, rummage for my keys.
I at least know where my pansies are.
we prize our little resurrections:
Pansy faces grin in surprise,
broken free
from frozen burial
and his unintentional seedlings smile
sunward: incipient trees
with promise
of autumn fruit.
The cycle of
life eternal.
Improbabilities
I should not have gone to college
should not have caught
that glimpse of grad school, should
have been satisfied with
the bachelors and settled
for less, for the job next door that,
expressing interest, was not interesting
enough
to capture mine.
I should not have moved
away, away to horizons
new and blazing blue:
Charlottesville, California,
Virginia, Washington,
should not have been
a scientist, wife, mom, or teacher,
techie, trainer, meeting
maven, director, writer,
poet.
I should not be this me at all,
but I am improbably all
these threads in a strange
and wildly-woven fabric:
wooly bumps and silky
slubs and jacquard patterns
warp and weft historically defined,
suspended on the loom,
still a work in progress.
Life.
should not have caught
that glimpse of grad school, should
have been satisfied with
the bachelors and settled
for less, for the job next door that,
expressing interest, was not interesting
enough
to capture mine.
away, away to horizons
new and blazing blue:
Charlottesville, California,
Virginia, Washington,
should not have been
a scientist, wife, mom, or teacher,
techie, trainer, meeting
maven, director, writer,
poet.
but I am improbably all
these threads in a strange
and wildly-woven fabric:
wooly bumps and silky
slubs and jacquard patterns
warp and weft historically defined,
suspended on the loom,
still a work in progress.
Life.
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