OPTIONAL POETRY

The courtyard undergoes
serial dilutions, the rain

making miserable
and pooling underfoot.

There’s nothing
that can’t wait.

Or no consequence
real enough to blunt

this murk; it’s cold
by the window

but none of us move.
Even the geese

have long since
bailed, a lone

crow flies higher
than usual,

it doesn’t even look
alive, but more like

a hole, a mobile,
missing piece of sky,

and when the rain rises
the crow goes too,

or the sky fills in,
and emptiness spreads

across the courtyard
as the last few pedestrians

abandon poise and break
into a flat-out run.

A sea town, or close
enough, where some
days brine settles
on the hills, lingers in
alleys, a sea breeze,
at least a sea smell–

not unpleasant,
though the gulls
get trashy here,
stooping around
to compete with crows,

and some days like
now the sun doesn’t
come up, just the overall
gray brightens and fades,
and, sure, it gets rough–

but these pockets
of salt help to
elevate the sense
of place, refining
streets where
day-drunk men
argue as they load
up a truck behind
the bar,

the touch of far
on near, an unseen
ocean rising up
against the usual
milieu of old grease
and piss.

Typical, to dream of buying a lotto ticket,
then to wake before scratching

the silver foil off, too busy trying
to find where I parked my dream-car,

anxious, dream-late to a dream-place.
Something exciting will happen soon,

but nothing much will come of it,
again, dreams only reflections

(or projections?) of the real;
forgotten ticket in bag,

I wandered wooded streets,
the neighborhood coming unfixed

whenever I turned my back,
whole roads replaced, trees

growing menacing, fences sprung up–
and I stayed lost until I woke.

There is an unseen tide
at play here, just audible
when the conversation
lulls. At times our words
are large and difficult
to hold, so like wet stones
we let them fall where
they will. At this time of year,
everything is damp, laced
or lapped, saturated
or submerged, but without
a tide-table I’m left unsure:
this water will go out or will
follow us home, or will do
something else, that much
is clear, that much I know.

[Composition]

A yellow spray of leaves is framed
by the window of a darkened room–

after a week of bearing down
things open up again,

the solvent bank of trees,
thin-limbed for miles,

the pacific emptiness
of an unlit room,

stagnant with sleep,
strikingly silent,

its soft-focus objects
slumping toward memory,

a row of the same shoes
facing the wall–

but it’s negative space
that draws the eye,

these empty vessels can’t
distract from an emptier one,

neither the bright-hued
actions of a broad-leaf maple

preparing to drop
what renders it vulnerable.

It’s a wash,
a monochrome wash,

blank on blank, a sky
less than sky,

striated by rain
that won’t let up.

Winter rye seed floats
in the furrows,

soon it should dig in,
unfurl, give cover.

Gone birds ink out
arrows with wings.

An instinct is flight.
An instinct is to burrow.

But which instinct is right?
Blight-burnt leaves splatter

the ground, damp
adherence, the aim,

the only real aim here,
to get as far as we can,

stick the landing,
and settle.

Things that don’t distract:

Kindness. Words
on a page

or otherwise, lines
of any type,

(they all lead
somewhere,

which is what
we don’t want,)

although we do.
Liquids help:

the way the rain
melts down

the window,
the calamity

of the lake,
each wave

consumed
while it builds,

cold comfort
going, gone

again.

Biopsy:
seeing life

but not
knowing,

not without
second sight—

and inside
of a dog,

it’s too dark
to read,

half the joke,
not as funny,

and in the lobby
on a pleasant wall

I stare at the same
agreeable painting

for minutes at a time
and never see it.