January 24, 2023 (3.)

You’ve misplaced, Maria dear,
your words again. They’re somewhere 
stuck in the television of your mind, 
and it doesn’t even matter
to me. You sing
lullabies like the birds, laugh 
head thrown back hands clapping
when I flap my wings. 
And when you forget 
a cop is a cop and call them
the blue the blue the blue,
I know what you mean. It is sad 
the brute violence 
of the long arm, the sick brain. 
But, Maria my dear, 
when you hold my face gently in your hands 
and kiss me twelve times on the cheek
you are speaking
perfect love. 

a nod as sweet as the piano trill
a tiredness as heavy as all the blankets

you’ve ever known

laid lovingly upon you

Handing Up

I've gone pole to pole with this;

there's a hole in daddy's brain where

all the duty goes,

there's a hole in baby's brain where

simple instructions go.

Don't mind me, I'm quietly in the service

of what I assume is something - 

a neat little furrow already ploughed,

I can trundle up and down again

until it's a holloway

Hell Lane, flanked by dirt 

held up by tree roots,

bedrock worn until I can only

see as far as the next kink

on the way.

This is a path I am on,

I haven't remade my world to walk it.

One mile up in Fort Collins,

I may as well be an astronaut,

or a salmon beaten senseless 

on the deck of an Alaska boat.