Losing the Thread Count

The world is not asleep, though you may dream

It dreams of you.  It’s busy with the bus,

Running late, and a list of shepherd’s pie’s

Constituents.  It doesn’t even snore;

It doesn’t toss.  It turns a blinded eye

Half of the time. You’re looking for a mitzvah,

Kissed from the dark side, full of hugs and zzzs.

You get an email, Jewish Singles Hot

& Holy Hurry Hurry.  Now’s the time

To turn your hot cheek to the cool percale

And hope the dead don’t know what’s going on.

Tomorrow in a While

Tomorrow, or tomorrow in a while,

After you lay down secateurs and pause
To watch the housebirds swoop, and when you smile,
Thinking of what a wilderness it was,
This little eden, when the warmth of order
Makes of fatigue a friend, when you install
A sense of fence along the gravel border,
Carving out here and here and here from all,

Remember that it was not always so.
Change uproots comfort, stains, then shatters, glass,
Packs up a house in boxes, hands to weeds
Their lasting triumph. All disaster needs
For flowers to be overcome by grass
Is one small crack through which the wild can grow.

Surprise, Surprise

From a long time ago. This appeared in Poetry Ink.

They say that at the house right down the street,
the one looks much like ours, they ran a brothel.
Actually, a whorehouse is what they say,
a word that people like, when they can manage
to poke it somehow into the conversation.

I haven't pictured anyone who lived there,
although I've tried, no woman who might be
the siren of our cul-de-sac. The cops
led two kids and a chocolate lab away.
I hadn't seen a one of them before.

At my house we were busy with the closets--
you take this, no I want that--mementos
of incidents we couldn't quite remember,
except of you, young in your wedding dress.

This Red Rose

from These Denver Odes

This red rose is perfect today,
Celinda. You, too. Its dewy
petals spread symmetrically
like--anyway, the rose unfolds;
and, at this moment, nothing could be
more like a rose than this rose. You, too.

Twilight soon. The chilly garden
will house a lesser rose, hunching
now, color leaching at its day's end.
You, Celinda, too. Forget-me-nots
last longer, stay neat. Prissy bores.

The Bear and the Goat will gather
over our houses after we
vacate them; and the rose knows no
second summer. You, too. Nor I.