They were hoodled
against
the frost and crossed
against
the light
across
the path of the officers
who—
jackets unzipped
—pulled to the side,
searched pockets
and coats for
evidence
they weren’t white
enough to saunter
through the cold.
-
-
When our office switched from recyclable
cups to sustainable mugs my bosssaid she never pours tea into coffee
mugs because coffee was a thoughtlessguest who never, really, leaves, like
there’s always one sock left underthe couch to be found six months later.
I shrugged because I’d never found somuch as a quarter beneath the cushions.
Jesus, too, warned against pouring new
wine into old wine skins lest they burstand stain the carpet but my coffee
mug has neveryet
cracked.
-
There are few opening lines more pretentious than
‘I have a hot tub’—maybe ‘I don’t own a TV’ or‘I read The Economist’—but it’s true and anyway
it’s for my wife’s fibromyalgia and it was on saleand there’s no other way to explain the leaves that
become trapped and float unnoticed to the surfacesink beneath the jets lost in the flotsom to wind
between our toes and lay at the bottom of thischemical bath dying as we relax color fading like
an astronaut without oxygen who can’t keep hereyes open as the warnings flash 15 10 5 3 percent
red through her eyelids but she’s long since succumbedto an isolated slumber and slipped down to death to
wind between God’s toes, a leaf in the filter buthe still knows her name.
-
I cannot draw
but I did
my best to gild
the functional canvas of
his
field-trip lunch sacks
with apple trees and
iron gates and
atoms and books.(It was the only way
I could be
there and anyway
PB&J
is boring enough.)The truth wasn’t,
though.
Needed neither apples nor atoms
to make it
any more
there
but we can’t help
ourselves with
such scintillating sin.(We save our
sharpest
crayons for the
cleanest
lines of our
deepest
fears.)Still
I wanted to draw
that Sunday,
as someone stood
in your stead,
the way you were:
hands raised in blessing
bouncing on your feet
so willing to
love
us and me and them and
him
as God so
loved
the world
with, surely, angels
at your side and behind
and around.But I could only
see a darkness
billow from
organ pipes
to claim your shadow,
sneak from
under choir robes
wrap your wrists
(again)
in chains and
the laughter couldn’t’ve
been yours because you
were screaming
as its claws sunk beneath
your soul.So instead
I wept
because I have such trouble
drawing hands. -
Our fear of slippery slopes
kills joy in its sleep,
ties God’s hands behind our backs,
rises from Satan’s coffee to
curl about his face as he stands
in his bathrobe watching a black
dawn loom above the trees.