In The Last Gusts

I haven't done anything in the past
four days,
except exist.

Sure, I've drifted
over the railroad tracks like a tuft
on the breezes.

Sure I've climbed to the top of the abandoned
trains, with their rust rubbing off.

Nothing can be done
in the final currents of Spring,
except let the breezes take you,
I've concluded.

Nothing can be done while
the Summer bulges about to burst, pulling
everything up into its pause.

As we float towards
that breathless state, Summer.

The lion let loose, lazily
being a lion.

The dandelions set loose,
knowing exactly what to do
on their currents of Spring.

Following the suggestions of the wind and
its invisible mumblings.

I've done nothing in the past four days
except watch the dandelions
prepare for summer.

I've done nothing
except wear the rust of giant trains
standing on their backs in the last gusts

before the lion walks.

Fondest Memory

The girl was young and full of synthetic sugars.

She walked by pale in the Spring day sun
after a long night of sitting on gravestones.

Meeting her friends with black eyeliner
in the depths of the public park
after the streetlamps went dark.

Each with a sad compulsion.
Each with a cloud companion of loneliness.

Their little clouds hovering above them as they moved
about the town.

We could see them drifting like bruises by the creek,
smoking cigarettes together in their private storms,
drizzling onto the water's edge, onto stones...

Or over in the plaza
under the town's statue of heroism.

The tall soldier looking resolute into the past symbolizing nothing.

Nothing but the town, just a place
where rain clouds gather.

And a few memories about sadness.

When rain washed mascara down cheeks
and the waters rose.

When the creek in the night wouldn't stop
and rose and kept on rising.

And so many little twigs were set loose from branches.
And so many twigs were set spinning over black currents.

This was the closest to home they felt
when the Earth was lost.

This was their fondest memory of how they lost.

Frozen Blossoms

we thought it was the end

we thought that the white skies

were in the past, but we think this

every year when April comes, like fools

we think this, marching on into the warm days

as if we found new life, as if we found

an opening, oblivious

of what's next, oblivious of what's waiting

like a frozen mountain range at the edge

of the week, that we will all have to climb,

that comes every year, this week

of the April fools telling each other

that before we know it, warm nights

will be here too, telling each other that the warm days

are here to stay, this week of walking through the park

in our short sleeves, our summer attitudes

donned, falling on the park grasses, lying still in

the park grasses in the tree patterns, watching

the ducks be ducks without a care, the reflections

in the ponds as their own purpose...

The great nonchalance of Summer descending, until we wake

to the last wisp of Winter reaching

into Spring, and our winter coats, our gray

clouds, our curses, are pulled from closets,

our wool bodies dark against the white fields,

our Summer temperaments dropping

with the frozen blossoms.

Out the Back Entrances

we ask ourselves

why we do the same thing

over and over

and we ask ourselves

why we are addicted

in these ways

these mysterious substances, the forms

that are less mysterious

every time we have them

for one or two days

or, for about a week

and then, gathering that glow

we see them glowing

on sidewalks

as they were

we see them glowing in the windows

while we window shop

they could be that women

who wraps herself up

with the long scarves,

who wraps herself up

like a sacred package

or they could be those bottles

lined up in the neat files

of the liquor store

with colors burning

ready to catch our spirits…

and then, it happens, like it did

the last time, we give in…

and it’s the inevitable walk of disgust

as we walk around as a guilty wilted thing

as we walk around like a droopy flower, a weed

and there is no escaping

what we are

when what we are

is what we did

and what we did

lives on inside us

as a sickness

but then, storm fronts drift in

and we see them

as unexpectedly as the last time

as they come unannounced

from somewhere over the mountains

the sky changes, churning over itself, arms coiling,

dark swirls swirling, with shades of gray on gray and the trees

nodding on and on in the peripheries

and on and on they nod as the wind sweeps

across the hours and the valley,

sweeping up everything superfluous

the memories of the lives we led

the guilt of doing what we shouldn’t have

in the corners of those long evenings

when we lost ourselves

out the back entrances

all going dim

we see buildings with blank expressions
looking down on main street
we see the mountains in their panes
as reflections,
the windowpanes

and people go in and out all day from the icy city light
to the dimness, then back out into the icy light…

and the buildings are still
staring in their expressions and their bodies
are stiff and the mountains
are still sprawling as they always do with their angles
and cloud storms racing over the stillness
in the distance, turning and tumbling over
the icy blue sheets…

we see it all in the building panes
while the buildings stare blankly down
on main street

holding the peaks in their glasses
and the movements of the cloud storms
in their glasses, the spectacles
showing us what’s
behind our shoulders, the distances
and our movements as we walk
down icy sidewalks, the spectacles
again and again
using the stillness to move
flowing over the icy streets…


there is a lot of talk
over coffee and tea
and it washes over the interiors
of so many rooms

with voices tumbling over voices
jumbling together against walls
and rolling and tumbling over tables and
onto floors, through the cracks
and out through the open doors
with the heat into the cold
wind from the mountains…

it all goes, but then it doesn’t
because they are not the same walls
not the same floors or ceilings or bricks, the bricks
having something else added

as we said what we said
that one time, when we said it
and moved how we moved when
we moved to the doors,
opening and closing
the doors, to the outside
how we moved
and how we saw…

the faces of the buildings staring out
the faces of the people looking about
for what is out to see in, looking
for something unknown but looking
always going in to retire…

eventually to the buildings,
their interiors, sometimes looking out
through the windows against
the windowpanes, faces and hands
pressed against the glass, but then
going back in to sleep
the panes going black
in buildings within buildings
falling to sleep, going through doors
back to sleep
to other neighborhoods in sleep…

as the outside turns in and dims out
and the compartments grow dim
and the mountains are growing dim
no longer reflections in the glass,
no longer spectacles
the people growing dim

leaving main street,
the buildings staring
in their absence

then there’s nothing left to be said
and no one left to be seen

as the snow falls
blanketing the sidewalks
covering the streets while we sleep
and tumble in our dreams, in our white sheets
our dream spectacles