After Millvale Music Festival, 2021

at Grist House the day is everlasting
       & we have just lived
through a pandemic.

August sun shining
                   I feel like an emperor
            owning the day
                                          til its end

the sandwich trucks
& hot dog carts
                                all of my life is good

we have just lived
through another
                           week under
                             shade of the
          everlasting days.

in all my life
   how many
                      days
  will
               I ever
                               get to feel like this?

a hundred?
                        maybe
                                         in only eighty
    years I need to
                               count
           my inventory

(originally published in Statement Magazine, 2023)

It’s 9:45 I’m Happy to Be Alive

I’m in bed an engine revs a motorcycle outside
someone on this street screams slow down
but I finish our pack of blueberries, I apologize
what for? We were both eating them. The small
sour ones. The large C-flat ones. Near the end
I say these kinda taste weird. You say they’re
very sweet. I apologize what for? Where I’m at
I can complain about such sweetness.

(originally published in impspired, Fall 2021)