A Syzygy of Chickens

My horoscope this morning:

You will swallow your pride
to give in to someone else
today, Taurus.

Take a brisk walk
and concentrate on reasons
for obedience.

The stars led me here.

I intended to quit
my job this morning

and found three chickens
in celestial alignment
wandering out
my door.

How wonderful
it would be to walk
and walk out
of town

to wherever the path
ends. Over the ledge
into the greenery
to live off the land

where I would
lay in the grass
and stare into

the night sky
and say
you can’t tell
me what to do.

Light years away
from my current
life. To break

the alignment
of monotonous days
squawking
order

when I want
to be jazz.

A roost of stars
conspiring
light to lead

me back but I’ve
thought and
thought

to find
no good reason.

 

(originally published in Good Works Review, Winter 2020)

 

“I Wish I Knew How to Quit You,” Says the Moon

We know it is us
who wish to quit the moon.

We close our eyes our jaggedness
could drive the sun away but never
in the way our metaphors could.

Still we write the moonlight
into the sand and growl
at the tide

and again
when the tide returns.

We cry from the shape
our lives took to intersect–

an hourglass
filled with sugar,
or a snail. Or a million

hourglasses, a million snails,
a million glimmering shells
in a measured slowness.

You were talking about the sunrise–
but I never wanted to look.

 

(originally published in Thin Air, Spring 2016)

A Walk Through Palms

When there’s nothing special about a sunset
lined with palms, there is nothing special.

Trees jut from behind roofs
like green skinny beanstalks extended forever.

Every plane a UFO.

Breathe the collective breaths of everyone.

Walks should be alone,
watching crows circle majestically
above stacks of garbage
bags in shopping carts.

Soon there are words:
first a sweeping hush,
a low hum.
Then the revving of neighbors
and their chatty sportscars.

The emissions enter the brain.
Then the atmosphere.
Whatever that is
is not what I am looking for.

 

(originally published in The Quotable – 2015)

The 2 A.M. Pacific Retreat

nights cold near the ocean
whispers reclusive invitations

       Chautauqua, Chautauqua

Andrew Bird’s Q-tip acoustic fills the ears
the long voice pizzicato plucks cluck pluck
scratching, say, the sand munching feet,

the seashells and their blue-moon breath
breathe into your ears the eternal secret
of the ocean, quiet all these sleepy years

How do you leave the wet sand after that?

 

(originally published in Loveliest – Issue #1)

Clinton, Ohio

Where I lived was a quiet crescendo
of snow six months of the year
& mosquito summers wearing shorts
into the sweating night

Where I lived had piano thunderstorm concertos
jolting the elderly house’s bones
with frenetic fingers, ivory paint,
red bricks

Where I lived was a lonesome walking trail
where morning chirps of blue jays went unnoticed.
Beds of acorns lined the autumn grass,
a kind of fallout for the process of aging
and the act of leaving

Always, now, in thought, it is a shoebox
of dandelions that writhe when I pet the cold cardboard–
hello, you are home, tonsils– my heart
can’t handle the hand-shaped imprints
from so far away

 

(originally published in Rubbertop Review – Volume VII, 2015)