Poem 32: Imagine Play

This town looks dingy after a snow
the tennis court nets are still up
the gate is locked, but it is the playground
we're worried about
in the second floor of a pink house
talking about a wine dinner
pour me another proseco
imagine play, I keep thinking
neon words in a night picture
or maybe chalk on a chalk board
you can see the tower in the background
and the rusty fence

Poem 31: Candles Don't

Candles don't brighten the room
we keep burning things
I don't mean to be obtuse
but there are large chunks
of a tree lying on our fence
our picnic table our snowy
back yard -- this all started
in a shoe store when the lights
went out -- it kept snowing
and snowing and the leaves
in the trees were still green
I haven't raked I said, I haven't
All over town the snow stuck
to everything the clock stuck
at 1:10 in the morning
the morning stuck to the shovel
in clumps -- thank goodness
for oil lamps for wood stoves
for waking up at 63 degrees
and stoking it for all the times
we stoke it for the stars
no street lights for envying
the people on the next street
over where we can see lights
in the windows for milk
on the back porch covered
in snow better than the refrigerator
better than October better
than going to bed in the early dark

Neon Pizza Sign

There it was, the neon pizza sign
silhouetted against evergreens
in the afterglow of a spring sunset.
This is about seeing something
out your windshield, pulling out
of a strip mall onto a suburban avenue.
It's about contrast and composition,
the hot spark of commerce
standing apart in your field, your horizon.
It's about looking up. About those
thin slices of your day that flicker on.
And what does it say? Look.
Quicken. You are here. Now.

At the Sugar Shack

April brought snow.
There were maple taps
in a bucket by the register.
I gave my daughter a couple dollars
to give to the waitress, to say
thank you for the strawberry pancake.
Once she crumpled them
in her hand, she did not
want to let go. Outside, the snow
fell, but didn't accumulate.
There was another child, sitting
in the mud on the path
to the animal village.
But we sensed the nap was close,
the end of our snow day adventure.
We piled into the car.
The crocuses won't die.
This might be all gone tomorrow:
the white-capped hills,
the mist, the bizarre melodrama
of winter.

Poem 28: March First, Evening

Lumps of snow outside my car window glint
like sugar. Beyond the garage I see
Orion's belt, disrobed of clouds.
On the radio, a piano clinks through a ballad
like an empty glass at a hotel bar.
The groceries in the seat beside me
were midweek necessities: dog food,
coffee, dish detergent. Lights off,
I wait a moment. Not too long.
Home will reclaim me soon enough.

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.