I am present
I am grateful

I am the must of summer
Through a kitchen window.

I am roots of an oak; firm and
Long aged—no—matured.

I am warm evening baths drawn
With tablets of color (literal ones,
It’s not that deep), that end up
All one specific black.
That’s science.

I’m the early morning cry of hunger
Waking with a fury untamped.
I’m milkfat melting with the warmth
Of my hand and a shake.
I am awake?

I am the kitchen, damp with
Last night’s chicken grease and
Butter because the thing that catches
It that came with it is broken; I didn’t
Know that grease could cake.

I am with full exhaustion,
daily,
and Effortless.

I am every piece of anything I’ve tried
To box or keep from itself; the toil
Of a justifiable medium. I am party to
The thoughts of greatness.

I’m the burden of no one, but no
One burdens me. (Am I the ass
On the—used that one already)
I’m the repetition of a life not lived.

I’m passion kept contained and bottled;
A vintage left untasted; the sharpest Point of tannin dulled and wasted.

I’m the throttled engine of a broken train.

I am the chickens,
Forever doomed to roost.
I am the trespass, sentence, hangman
Neck and noose—

-–I am hopeful
I am joyous

I am the serrated edge
Of an icicle in winter, carving
My name wherever I land.

I am a strand of hair in my
Own eye; Once I was nerve
The tendril wrapped; the things
We cannot see through choked vision.

I am a monarch, not a butterfly or
King; I am the guy who knows the
Guy who carved the ruby for his ring.
I am the ghost of the buffoon.

I am starch. I am stiff and
Starting to cave in. I am brave
And true. That’s not true. I lie
On grass in worse vestments
Than if I were under it.

I am Frost; bitten, no
Punctured by the morose
But stark fangs of inevitability.
I am the master of futility.

I have chosen this and I have
Kept every promise I meant to.
I have genuflected behind each
Rotten pew, and cursed each frere
Or penguin to a hearse. I have stilled
The chatterteeth of regret with
Every drink I’ve met, and loved the view.

I haven’t yet seen what it holds, or brings,
But, at night, while we all sing,
I am whatever It is we have that needed glue.

I am whole, and pieces, because
of you.

I know we’ve coated all our motives
With veneer of stainless steel.
But honestly, I have no guilt
Inside the shiny pit of fire on the deck.
Oh, I’ve been told it won’t meet code
To put a blaze atop a bed of wood.
I also know that packaging,
With cardboard strips is flammable.

I’m sorry if it’s damnable that we can
Roast our primitive goose out here
Without the drudgery of rubbing sticks
Together. Not my fault that instant flame
Is now on sale for pennies – you remember –
Those copper coins we used to slip
In tongues of semi-shoes called loafers.
This life is more than we can hope for.
I’m just so over all the noise and rancor.
Let my solace be my anchor, so what
is beast in me is not just what is least in me.

My everlasting bonfire is the one I set.
Sometimes on mornings just when fog rolls in.
Sometimes in evenings just before the light
Grows dim, and we are forced to take
Account of any duties we’ve left out.
I think communal fire was the early Church –
A place to find within the smoke and warmth –
A respite from the steady fears
That tingled fingers and then stripped our gears.
The blaze and screen give respite from the din.

So let me stare into the fire.
Let me hear and smell desire.
In a moment then true life will
Break the spell. I’m just an old man on
A porch or deck, with no knees left
To genuflect, and wary of the gods
Who leave us cold. As we grow old.
I know it’s all too easy to decide
It’s way too hard.
Let me listen to my fire. Let me be.

It’s nice they have the bags now, though. The
Ones you put everything but the bottle in, and microwave
It for a few minutes until anything persisting (like an errant
Flake of fat, or apathy) would be handled with the
Most delicate of nuclear disintegration. (Once, I forgot
To rinse and left a little bit too much on the fragments
I had readied; a lesson unrevisited).

There’s a fragrance
To the act of bottle-washing, unrelated to the contents, or amount.
Imagine the sweet bite of a moment caught in your throat,
Dancing in a kitchen full of torn paper (because of course she’s Elsa).
There’s something dripping off the kitchen chair, it looks like water,
And the top of Flat Rock Dam; we’d walked the mile and a half
A few times, ultimately ending in the foundational outline of
The remnants of a mill (the larger structure further up the hill
Displayed the fury and the passion of a chaotic, golden, younger
Age).
We dared ourselves to make the risky transit, and in the middle
We would sit and slide.
At the bottom, the force of water and its falling
Made the whole of me (in just three inches of ice water) afraid.
The sign said don’t or surely we will,
then we did and they didn’t,
so we stayed.

I think it’s juice; the apple or the grape.
I’m not sure if we have the white
Or red, but
Clemmy said she wants to try them both and mixed.
I say, “White Zinfandel, or Provencal rose?” then (sneering through her ears)
She walks away.
And once again,
I taste the burn of early twenties
Ignorance: what is pride when
I can make the foolest of myself,
And never hide.

The bottles sat before, stagnating, collecting soil and infection,
Soaking somewhere out of socket.
Now they dry on a shelf
Designed specifically for this, almost aging.
Then give me all our pride
And shame and worry (cloaked), and
I’ll emerge elf-actualized and
Oaked.

I’ll miss you.
Which is weird to say
as I already deflect
to avoid
being truthful.
But there is no lying here.
Just the floors and the seats
the walls and the counters
the garden beds
the yard.
And the exact height where
I start to pay attention to them
as they showed me how fast they can run
and crash into me, sitting in the
pit, the corner of the couch
on the floor where I meet them every morning when they wake up
and I’ve slinked out to the living room,
because now they’re tall enough to
hit their head on the peninsula overhang
as they go through the kitchen
There’s no lying here. You know.
Every spot I’ve worn into your
squares,
wears me. This is me. And I’m saying that I’ll miss you, because most of all
I’ll miss me. And I know
The father I am with you. The time it takes to get from the kitchen to bath time.
I know what knees and feet sound like
in every room
And I know who it is, how fast they’re going and what they’ve gotten distracted by along the way.
There’s no lying here.
And I know
where you were when I’ve been broken, when I’ve been fixed.
When our son Jude never took his first breaths
There’s no lying here. I hated you. I hated everyone.
I know the husband I am with you.
The times you’ve cradled us two
and we slept. Or times we didn’t
And it meant everything to hear the
screech of the gate
in the wind.
Or to listen to the rain hit the roof, holding my wife like we’re teenagers learning what love can be.
We were married in the backyard
in a mud pile of our closest friends and family.

There’s no lying here, no matter how splayed, everything were dead frogs.

Theres no lying here, In truth, I’ll never know how to say goodbye to you.
And really
I’ll never be able now
to ever truly thank you.

Fishing for Gold
(Women With Purses)

A silhouette of life endures
Among percussive bursts
Of hopes and goals
Quite buried
In the bottom of the purse.

The shadows hover quietly
While all the noises stay
Full center stage,
Preventing dreams
From getting in the way.

The nugget shining brightly here
Within the pocket folds
Has candy wrappers
shielding eyes
as everything grows old.

She just keeps digging. Treasures never
Rise beyond the earth
Without some therapeutic
Rigging. Pain? Yes.
And some mirth.