The Night I Came to See You Go

The owl flew over my head the night 
I came to see you go,
and I have a memory of a fleeting fox
running from my lights, that may be incorrect.
While the helper hovered in my old room
I laid my hand on the broad arch of a back
I had always known was strong enough to carry the weight 
of any dark--but not perhaps the one in which
you had been so long asleep,
and where you no longer breathed.
Did you know that you were going?
When they carried you steeply down the angled stair
I was afraid in silent light infused with the color black,
and we would not have let you go 
out that New England company front door
like a stranger after an awkward visit,
except that the efficiency of your bearers
was not to be denied. 
How often since then have I recollected
and wondered where you were. It has never seemed
to me that you are gone; always I feel your distant regard
from a place I cannot see. Perhaps it is the same to which
they have retreated in both time and memory, invisible,
your guides and friends, the owl and the fleeting fox.

January 26 2012

There Are Fortunes Scattered

There are fortunes scattered through this house
on floors and counters and this desk.
After the cardboard containers were put away
we read the cryptic mottoes and predictions
and fed half the cookies to the wagging dog.
We shared our fortunes with each other;
I gave them mine and received
others in return. One child became the keeper
but her stock of paper strips is incomplete:
too many to keep up with and so they stay,
spread abroad in crannies after reading
so that anyone may find a fortune anywhere.
It is good to be so generous 
with each other and with these our given fates.

January 14 2012

Forward Lunge

We passed the wrinkled toe of a respectable tree
at the outermost point of a marathon march
intended to wear out the dog.
He paid it no improper attention,
being focused on easily beating the challenge
he had no knowledge of.
And as he strained the leash along the boardwalk over the bog,
the dog gave the squabbling ducks no more
than courtesy's inspection.
The overhead geese in their ragged vees 
were beneath his regard; only other dogs and people
and peculiar smells rated a brief diversion;
otherwise, it was only the forward lunge
he hungered for, toward whatever lay ahead,
to desperately want, to call, to reach, to catch,
to eat, and to chase again.

January 3 2012

First Night, Boston

The prospect of rain kept some people away
while others put on their raincoats of decision
but the end of the tip
of one fin of a fish 
made of ice 
was involved in its own dissolution.
Each drop of itself was a private goodbye 
to the public display of its crystalline form--
no looking back, a hurrying down
to form on the ground 
a fluid new resolution.

December 31 2011