How Happy

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Do you wonder
How I can tell
What is your tell

I see into windows
Frost-covered and wishing for shutters
For the passage of time

And inside
A frozen home infested with uncertainty
Inhabitants fleeing or fled

Some foundation
Proud, I think, given its lack of examination
Not wanting the neighbors to know

The Joneses

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Walking dogs in the Sunday morning sunshine

Surprises for eachother to find

Maybe pancakes, or a new rocking chair

Building upon last night’s love, for today

Today

Is altogether theirs

Freedom

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First, -wait, first- I told her,

Before we may take the obligatory walk,

During which you don a yoke, and then become free,

And I don a wintry coat with tundra boots, and am forced to reflect upon my sin,

First,

I must self-destruct

Steel & Glass

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Hold fast to speed
Virility
With horse-powered heart of cold, hard steel
That feeds the oats my hand cannot

Fall sleeping, glassy-eyed
Blind
A plasma world upon a wall I cannot penetrate
That feeds fairytales, as my feet live actually

Something Gardens

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A sunny day

On this, the fore-edge of Spring

It looks like something good happens here

In this, the place they renamed, “Something Gardens”

Although I see really only billboards and bungalows and bulldozed-over housing projects

And strangely, no gardens

But there is the color and promise upon everyone’s skin

The special sauce in people’s blood

So I become sure

I plan to see the Something Good that happens here -those “Something Gardens” that mean to grow

So I stay and I work

I help

I sow, that someone else may reap

I wait

And I see that I, too, grow

Unfounded

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For the first time since the first time, I was presumptive
Those crickets!
Their song for me
Our mutual love of warm summer nights … and the reedy mid-day marsh….

For the second time since the first time, I learned
They were just crickets … being crickets
They chirp, they do not sing
They survive, they do not love

For Father’s, In Advance

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For the fathers who found me right where I was at those given times, and right on-time

You, who, with green eyes, blue eyes, and blue-green eyes

Loved me with a love that helped me grow tall, be tall, and stay tall

Thank you for the canned vegetables, the frozen vegetables for-the-first-time-in-a-lifetime, and for the fresh-from-the-farm-and-roadside vegetables

Though some would seriously judge, I needed your yo’ mama jokes, bar room jokes, and first thing in the morning jokes, to remind me to smile

-you showed This firstborn how to be Serious Business, after all-

Thank you forefathers, for being my fathers, for being there then, and though elsewhere now, for being still here nonetheless