A few of my least favorite things

Thunder on a wintry night
Shards of glass on a beach
Rooms closing in on you
Objects larger than they appear
The fine print on a credit card bill
Anger expressed with a smile
Nausea on vacation
Oh and…
Friends who turn cold without warning

Should I not buy a house?

After visits to the realm of the facile
I've often wondered
Should I not buy a house?

What is and is not

Let’s talk of what is and is not
If I say day, you say night
If I say friend, you say no friend
If I say here, you say gone
Me: eternal, you: ephemeral
Swim, drown
Walk, stumble
Smooth, abrasive
Sunny, buckets of rain
All the live long day, oh de do dah day
Let’s talk, let’s stop talking
Hello, Goodbye
Whose idea was it to talk in the first place?

Everlasting Life

If I live forever, don’t be surprised
You read it here 
And were thus warned
Furthermore, I think I’ve been alive
Since time began
From the other direction
My claims are based in fact
On strong suppositions
For example, right now
I feel an urge
Or maybe a demi-urge
To trumpet joy
Loud enough to wake the dead
Peaceful enough to rock them back to sleep
I recognize this thing in me
From what I saw of my ancestors
And occasionally in my daughter
Maybe the genie part
But it’s loose in the world
I can feel it
The checkout lady at the store yesterday
Heavyset, leaning, waiting for the next shopper
Of mirthless countenance
Enough to make me notice
But unless I miss my guess
She knows and will know again
This smoldering bliss
Eternal as the sun
And when she and I
Find an exit
The next service rep and customer set
Will occupy commercial time and space
Flowing in its arteries
Wetting it with tears
Between bouts of boundless bravado
Assuming their place among the everlasting

On our 10th Anniversary

A decade, a smecade, who’s counting?

…

10 is a fitting piece of a hundred

 * * *

Cawood says, you can’t make ‘em both

If you don’t make the first

Well…

You can’t make forever

Without squeezing the moment

In Kentucky

Our friends do better than us

You could have married

and had a house…

You could have married

And gone to Duck each summer…

You could have married

And travelled widely…

You could be dreaming

Of greener pastures now

I don’t know

But after 10 years, you’re here

And I’m here

And we don’t look the same

And we don’t feel smarter

And we’re probably not

And somewhere out there

We’ll pass

And forever will be about the time

Methusalah was potty trained…

But to us

Forever will be everything this side of eternity

And everything we make it to be.

Waxing eloquent fits my style

Like grits in a croissant…

You know that

But 10 years is a long time

To wax ineloquent…

10 years is a long time to wax anything

old, cold, indifferent to feelings

to be humbled by a beautiful soft-spoken

tissue smile

Given without warning to an

Indolent husband.

Tomorrow starts forever – minus 10…

When the clock strikes twelve…

Recanting is a 10 spot late

Reliving is an awkward state

Reveling is a natural reaction

Regretting is a threatening action…

The appropriate thing to do

On the diamond anniversary

Is to have red wine with beef,

White wine with fish,

Elbows off the table,

Sleeves rolled down

And something said with a Hallmark.

You could have had that too.

…but you chose me and I you

and we fools continue to choose

the other,

choosing to dent the plate occasionally

with a run, as convenient…

to take Stephy swimming,

to ponder what’s left of forever

minus 10…

with the same churning stomachs

of twenty,

a wallet of less than plenty

Yes, romance has been there everyday

Of the 3650

It was there in Kentucky, Indiana,

Tennessee, New Jersey, and Tennessee again…

It was there on I-70, I-74, I-64, I-81 and I-75…

It was there through the vicious

Spring cleanings,

All the missed commencements,

And the registration rites.

It’s been there in labor

And in rest,

In sickness and in health…

We recognized it at McKee

When Billy Jo McCalister

Jumped off the Tallahachee Bridge.

We recognized it when Roger died…

We recognized it when Tennessee accepted us

And when New Jersey let me go…

We recognized it on August 6, 1977

And on December 30, 1981…

I’m catching a faint glimpse of it

As we near the end of it.

Are you?

You’ve cried out of one eye and worked

With the other, I know that…

If we get less than forever, thanks for the 10.

10 cakes should be torched…fireworks

10 times the size of the 1982 World’s Fair

should be shot…

10,000 mimes should reenact Romeo and Juliet’s

dying embrace.

But we will go out and eat

And come home and hammer away

At life after 10,

And I’ll joke something macho like…

You treat me right and I won’t beat you as much

The next 10 years…

And I’ll mean:

God grant me the clarity to accept

As noble, a life with a P County girl

With enough sense to marry a Lee County boy

With barely enough sense to get out of the rain

And make him a “wandering poet”

With that beautiful, soft-spoken

Tissue smile given without warning…

To me

Tonight

Love is never lost, only those who love

Love is never lost, only those who love, and they but for a while…

Walk out the road, come back, another one’s gone…

Turn on the TV, send up a shade, turn down the cover, clear your throat, there are not as many as before…

I have been down this road a dozen times but I still lose my way, left or right? 

Around this bend or that one? 

Slow down or speed up? 

Call me a cab, I’ll pay the fare, getting there, is all I care.

Something in the woods, is picking off the weak ones, walk out in the open, in the light…

They’ll rob you in the shadows, Cough it up mister, a sharp poke in the back…

This type of uncertainty, slipping around, shy and resigned…

The first day of spring and it’s 90 degrees, by the middle of May you’ve turned the furnace back on…

Something ain’t right, too much wind, too light of a jacket, enough to make you think, full blown winter, the nights were long, the days cold as snake’s blood, only the hearth sustained, gloves and hats were the order…

Lean into the long hill, it climbs easier…

The way ahead?...

There’s only one navigator and he’s lost at sea…

Too much storm, not enough ship…

No place for the faint of heart, work to be done, who cares if you’re tired, Daddy’s back from the store with Pepto Bismol, mama’s up with the spoon Son, make up in courage what you have lost in clarity  Get more than water from the rock, enter the time beyond when what’s bigger than you makes the path to the promised land…

Up at dawn, out on the lawn, the steamy horses shudder This is really how it’s supposed to be…

The things you love are now summed up in one rectangular box with flower spray and baby’s breath…

What you love is sometimes scattered all over God’s green earth…

Finally here’s a moment, when it’s down front and center…

Stand, walk up, look at him, and with the Holy Spirit goosing you, say with a straight face…

“Wow, I feel like I could climb five trees backwards.”

Smile, recall, love is never lost only those who love and they but for a while

At What Cost?

What can my words say

That has not been said

All time and other elements

Lose their respective niches

Until pioneers are dreamers

And cowboys are truck drivers

Poets get lost in the rush

And children are unconcerned

Automatic answers are slow

From the minds we think should know

Did Milton find the lost?

And if so, at what cost?

I shake to view the sky

Without glasses over my eyes

Without removing the chance

That in the end, I’ll think

You were the most important thing left