Poem 27: Robert Burns

Burns is standing in front of a room full of co-eds in a kilt, a professor with real, live knees.
Burns is the starch collar splayed, the flushed cheek, the raised glass.
Burns is late, packed into a suitcase in the back seat, 30 miles per hour on the Interstate, alongside Mount Tom, in a morning of light snow and spun cars.
Burns is old friends, remembered.
Burns sees you in your striped shirt, like contour lines. Burns approves.
Burns is a horse named Jenny Geddes, tipper taipering through the borderlands.
He's the gowd, the hard words you don't understand, the brothers be, but the not-American-enough.
Burns is my brother's tie, a year ago on a cold January day under the Arch.
Burns is a repaired aorta, bleeding under control, sleeping on a chair in the waiting room.
Burns is walking down the hall, listening to the clicking of the leather tassels on your sporran, echoing off the painted cinder blocks.
Burns is being admonished for not being on Facebook.
Burns is the blue-bound embossed volume from 1881 that I read from on my wedding day.
A right guid willie-waught, the slick ice sweating whisky after midnight, the rustle of papers on the day before grades are due.
Burns is a diamond stylus, leaving poems etched into glass.

Poem 26: The Road Home from Pre-School

Through the trees
from the Industrial Park,
I could see
the frozen bend in the river.
Over the iron bridge,
glazed with snow,
I could see puffs of mist
at the confluence.
This was my frigid return,
down the hill, across
the river, over a ridge.
The clouds were thin,
the sky, blue. You
probably didn't notice,
absorbed with your friends
at school.