I tell him I know,

I know,

but it isn't true,

any more than that he understands me.

He's an almost-gone dog,

a shawl of cancer beads shrouding a mystery

that tells me I don't know,

I don't know.

July 11 2023

Arriving

I wish I knew that memory more.

All I have is green beneath the wing,

rising as we made our final approach.

Were there really zebras

running beside the landing strip?

And then that taste of orange soda

in the British style hotel.

That’s it. But we were finally there

and that’s enough.

July 11 2023

To have looked through a kaleidoscope before

is not at all the same thing

as looking through one again.

May 2023

Did I tell you how the other morning 

Molly came down the road, 

paws and tail, 

to sniff his chin?

Old man, he stood still till she was done,

then he dipped his head to hers in turn, 

good girl,

and she ran back to her owner.

April 24 2023

The least of life is much to love.

Consider a withered tree

and how we hope to see it bud again,

and those who agree

that lichen on stone is beautiful.

To say nothing of pine.

To say nothing of ivy's profusion.

And then the lawn,

and then the crows,

and the wide savannah and its game and predators,

and the oblate spheroid of incalculable wealth.

We are the least of life, but there is much to love.

April 9 2023

Morning Pledge

For now, I will do these things

and I will be these things

and I will say these things

and I will see these things

before me.

The rest,

that horrid host,

shall not consume me.

April 4 2023

if you think about it

we’re all in a place

where someone falling from low earth orbit

would love to be

March 16 2023

All That Africa

All that Africa is gone from me now.

There is no continent

where once it crept in my heart,

tectonic.

No canvas tent survives to tell

of water buffalo just outside the flap

or elephants looming in darkness

beyond the mothy lantern light.

There is no VW bus named Zinjanthropus

for you to practice packing the night before,

and pack again at dawn.

There is no high plantation

from which you can carry me down,

head reeling from the mountain air.

I can’t put a pocketknife beside you

to show the scale of your life in a photograph.

Mzee, I will lay you down gently

in the creek bed where we found you,

old hand axe,

and I will dust off my hands,

and walk back to the car,

and my eyes will try to see the valley,

but my heart will feel only the rift.

March 27 2023

When you are helping them down a stair

they do not know they are descending,

you are naturally gentle.

This, above all other times, is not one for a fall.

Let them reach the floor with dignity.

The sleep they do not know they seek

is waiting on their old familiar bed.

January 31 2023

Learning Your Way

To begin with, you won't know the language.

New countries are always hard,

and you'll probably wonder often why the hell you came.

On some height you may pause, winded,

to see the city laid out below,

but fail to notice that this breathing place

is well along the road.

Here you can become a native,

but you don't yet know what that means.

Hoist your troublesome bundle again and keep walking.

December 23 2022

The sound of one hand clapping

is a mirror without its reflection

a mind emptied of noisy thought

a heart released from fruitless desire

and the words a poet doesn’t need to write.

August 12 2022

Border crossing

We're in a time of borders crossed

or about to be crossed.

The yard is past the tipping point--

there's no recovering from forsythia--

but as yet we only sometimes think

about telephone calls.

He's sleeping more.

Meanwhile, her gown is hanging on the bathroom door

to get the wrinkles out,

and tomorrow she'll walk across the stage.

Reading life always brings us to the turning of its pages.

Tic

Let this hand repose.

This breakfast placemat can be its bed,

not a tapping ground:

no Morse code spelling out the burden of today.

Hand, you’ve telegraphed all this before;

there’s no news in what you’d say.

It’s my only job,

this letting go so I don't fall,

and I won’t send any other message home.

Winter takes it seriously, his job.

He charges just for showing up,

but he really would like to help you.

Unfortunately, he tells you,

he can’t fix it now;

he’ll have to order the part,

and it might not even get here

till spring.

December 24 2021

Hen came to the deck door,

softly asking;

what, we didn’t know.

We were agog:

we haven’t had a chicken here in years.

But no, you can’t come in;

go back to your lady friends.

She jumped through the railings

onto the crazy lawn,

and wobbled to the big rhododendron

at the bottom of the yard.

Next morning we had to entice her

through the open gate,

so she could run off the wrong way

into the woods.

Google confirms

that my name is a question,

which pleases me.

When I tell you I am Michael,

the proper response is,

“No one.”

My niece asked on Facebook what makes us happy.

I will answer the shapes of stone

and the circles of lichen that bloom across granite surfaces.

There's ledge behind our house that I call Sleeping Dog Rock

for the way its back curves as if in sleep.

Deep folds line it, almost cracks,

which tempt me to a chisel, but I would never wake it;

soon enough, but after we've moved away,

the rock will break,

revealing its indisputable answer.

Leave a heart-shaped stone

in your gravel driveway,

to show it can survive the weight of wheels,

the weight of snow,

the wait for spring.

Don’t bring it inside

where warmth is easy;

think of it living in darkness

hour on day on year.

There’s no darkness

in the heart of solid rock,

and it’s clear what it helps you to remember.

Home is where you all find

a place and a way

to fall asleep together.

I think mostly of the dog,

who chooses over his bed

the narrow space

between our bed and the wall

for the sake of being closer.

He starts and groans

and snores and smells.

I know my daughters are in their rooms,

and she is next to me,

so I can turn out the light

to let the darkness cover us,

and lie down

dreaming in my chosen place.

March 26 2022

Aquinnah

It has been a long walk to this lighthouse.

My mother pointed to it from the lookout.

I was young. There were no fences then,

but beach roses and poison ivy intervened,

and I had to run down the cliffs anyway.

For many years the eye was only

something that blinked, red and white;

a distant acquaintance coming into view

around the final bend in the road.

I was busy doing. I didn’t think of it.

Now my family is here,

and I can ask them to go with me.

There's a specific island triumph,

when you reach a place you have always seen

but could never get to before.

This is a bit like that.

It is surprising to find a lawn.

It is surprising to learn

that I could have visited years ago.

I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.

That’s all right.

You had other business.

I'm used to waiting.

You never know when someone will need you.

January 15 2022

Wading

Our dog wrote a poem:

dog

he walk in

water

dog

in water walk

he walk

in river

walk he dog

he grin

he walk

in river

water

walk

he

dog

The wind respects no flags.

It will hang your favorite nation up

in branches, till it's just a tangled rag,

or wrap it around a pole for the rain to darken,

so it could be any country,

orange, red, green, or blue.

Don't kid yourself. Remember:

We're all the same to weather,

and flags fly only at the pleasure of the wind.

January 21 2022

Crow flies

straight across the powdered sky.

There’s birdsong;

it’s an early spring day in fall.

The season’s at a loss:

I should be sleeping, not waking;

the summer did its work,

and now it’s my task to cease.

It isn’t for me to worry about

the ferment and the chaos of next year.

November 21 2021

The sidewalk runs out here.

I’ll face the traffic down the long slope of road

to the neighborhood I used to see

every sunrise morning, and the ocean,

which has never drawn one fear from me

on the flat pull of receding water.

The beach is just an end point for my walk,

but irony is lively in the salty breeze

when I find that I can’t reach the sand

because the seawall stairwell’s full of slopping tide,

scrubbing steps and stones as clean as air.

September 20 2021

After work, go outside.

Drop the hose end into your watering can

and watch the water rise.

Turn the water off and let the hose

drip onto the ground.

Be fair:

All your plants are thirsty.

June 18 2021