Florida

I’m thinking I might move to Florida
now that I am old but not to one of those
old people farms where everyone eats
an elegant dinner at four

I’m thinking I’ll maybe buy a trailer
on a dirt road at the edge of a swamp
where the previous owner has left
a ‘72 Nova raised up on cement blocks

there will be a metal shed on back of the lot
rusted with a door that hangs by just its top hinge
wedged between some sad looking palmettos
inside will be a lawn mower that hasn’t run in years

in Florida everyone has a lanai
reinforced at the bottom to keep the gators out
mine probably will have to be fixed
Florida seems a very odd sort of place

(for Mike Frawley)

Belfast Maine

Scrabbling crab-like over a rock-strewn shore
where the tide pushes its shoulders up against the rocks,
under the light of a dangerously swinging crescent of a moon,
I picked up the cast-off molted shell of a horseshoe crab,
creatures of the shallow sea
who, knowing precisely who they are,
have not changed in a quarter of a billion years.

Home

whether we are bower birds or beavers
paper wasps or prairie dogs
guinea hens or humans
we build something we can call home

Mourners

all the mourners leave the funeral at the same time
crowding the exits hands shoved into pockets
playing with our car keys and coins
eyes directed at everyone’s shoes

we’ll all be so much more comfortable
in the room with the coffee urn
and plates of little sandwiches
no longer embarrassed to be alive

Broken Sidewalk

In a dream I was on the old side of town
where the maple trees that line the streets
crack slabs of concrete sidewalk
and raise them into satisfied smiles.

There were people there I knew but did not know,
and things I knew before I could know them.
I saw everything with the eyes of a child,
laughed with a child’s laughter white as snow
and thought in my child’s mind that everything was alright.

A Critical Analysis of “Hey Diddle Diddle”

“Hey diddle diddle,
The Cat and the fiddle,
The Cow jumped over the moon,
The little Dog laughed to see such sport,
And the Dish ran away with the Spoon.”

from the way he was laughing
the little dog must have found the cow
and her moon-jumping hi-jinks quite hilarious
as did I when I first heard about it
it must have been a spectacular leap
with no space suit and helmet or tanks of oxygen

the cat I assume set this all to music
dressed as I imagine he was
in his little boots and a feathered cap
the grin on his feline face growing with every step
of the jig he danced across the barnyard

the dish and spoon I didn’t quite get
which was the boy and which was the girl
and were they eloping or was the spoon
an unwilling participant in an evil plot
the dish had concocted to abduct the spoon
and hold it for ransom
how much can a spoon be worth

if they were eloping
which I instinctively think is the real answer
what family found their union objectionable
and what about afterward
would they settle down on their own little farm
in some exotic and far away place like Iowa
would they be taking the cow with them
were the dog and cat friends and would they be going too

so many unanswered questions
so little forensic evidence to support any particular theory
but I guess that’s what poetry is

Monkeys Writing Sonnets

To test an old theory
I set four monkeys in front of a typewriter
To see if they could reproduce the works of William Shakespeare
By pressing the letters at random.
After years I finally got a sonnet out of them,
But not quite prefect the sonnet read:

“Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
Baby, Baby, Baby oh
Like baby, baby, baby, no
Like baby, baby, baby, oh
I thought you’d always be mine, mine
Then were not summer’s distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,
Like baby, baby, baby, no
Like baby, baby, baby, oh”

Marriage

in a fallow pasture near my home
stand two large oaks of indefinite age
they stand alone in the empty field
left standing when the land was cleared

they live together these two beings
trunks grown straight and side by side
two but with a single perfect silhouette
a marriage longer than a hundred years

some future time a storm will come
with lightning or with violent wind
to take the life of one great tree
leaving one to stand alone

Topology

standing at the corner where our lives intersect
you wave and I watch you grow slowly smaller
this is the way of lines which converge but do not bend

the topology of lives beyond the complexity of algebra
easier to experience than to understand
if we move slowly enough time may overtake us

Silver Songs Turning

silver songs turning sienna skies over dunes again
winter beach dressed in khaki coveralls
lone fisherman arrives looking raw broken
turning near silence where salmon await

now silver songs fade into sienna beginnings
between one eye blink and the next