BLACK FRIDAY

Sitting here on the back deck ensconsced

in my down coat, I watch the wraiths of my breath,

vagrant souls fading under the sun. 

I’m drinking coffee and writing poems,

desperate and delicate poems about

the season, how the stiff leaves scuttle

across rime-frosted grass, how shadows

from the cedars stretch toward death.  I think of

my old loves, the bike races around Lost Lake,

the solitude of running lost in the woods,

seeing those lost photos from Joy of

that skinny punk squatting beside the greenhouse

writing poems, all of these surfacing on

Black Friday, alone and under the sun, wishing

all the time that I knew just one thing, something

I cannot see or know, something just

beyond the surface, like the shadowland,

where all the meaning lurks, like a truth

somehow knowable, but it turns out there’s nothing

there, nothing beyond the sun perched on the cedars,

the wind scuttling the leaves, and like the wind chimes

and a breath withheld, I can only hear

the neighbor’s hound yelping.  Even with this

coffee and crisp tingling in my fingers

I am slowly nodding off, drowsing

in the sun, dreaming -- if this is all

there is then this is failure and loneliness

at once, ecstasy slowly and exquisitely

fading from that very first captured breath —

that jolt into being! -- and now, sitting here,

years later, the chilling tendrils of breath

dissipating in the blueness, soon even this

will pass and I’ll think What was I thinking?,

What was I seeking?, beyond this, this,

and then, this.

DAYLIGHT SAVINGS

Spring forward, fall back.  This year the clock was

set back late, so for days our circadian

rhythms slumbered like sluggard somnambulists,

sleepy-eyed dullards sporting Venti Starbucks

to replenish our sun-deprived souls. And so

the days of costumes and ghouls and trick-or-treat

buffoonery dragged on like an endless dream.

REM-cycled jack-o-lanterns and ax-murderers,

Snow Whites and Little Mermaids, witches and seahags,

harlequins and zombies and hobos, gypsies

and goats and ghosts–it’s a dream world of pop

culture and myth, Michael Jacksons and Hercules,

Sleeping Beauties and Marilyn Monroes,

Obamas and banana-nosed Nixons, and

today I’m in the back yard sunning myself

and raking leaves, the detritus of memory

and the death of photosynthesis, drinking

coffee and reading some sun-drenched

philosopher’s poems--let’s say it’s Neruda,

but it could also be some ancient Greek

whose pagan senses seem too awake and

luscious for this tired climate, it’s the first time

I’ve felt the sun in ages, all those memories

roiling up like waves at the shore as I rake,

and the sun warms my hands, my hair, it feels

as if I’m coming alive again like I did

years ago, back in college when all of those

ideas that cluttered in my mind simply

fell loose, one by one, tumbling like the leaves

falling all around me, how delightful

that feeling was, to awaken to the world

again, the senses and even the memory

of the senses, the patron of wet leaves,

the sting of sweat on my neck, the slight ache

in my shoulders as I rake, stretching

my face to the sun to feel the sweat and

the chill rising from the ground, from the west,

and the yearning to do something, something

yet unknown, it was the premise and promise

of love, or something, of springing forward and

falling back, at once, and letting it all go,

if only for a moment, and then wondering,

What just happened?, and When will it happen again?

As I fall back into time, not quite so alert

but seeking the same warm cinnamon doughnuts,

the same cold cider, the same feeling of being

lost again, and the wonder of that.