OPTIONAL POETRY

In enough fog this house
is a treehouse, everything
come in close,

a leaf recoils
from an unseen drop
of rain,

only reaction
visible, here, there,
the leaves ring,

and it’s all too simple
to forget antecedents,
the silence is lazy

-making, the forest
immense, the pines
too water-laden to stir

at all, and maybe it’s
the same with you.

Looking at a map these days
my eyes drift up to the border towns

or over to the coastal towns
and linger longer than they should.

Our eyes are meant to follow lines,
some of us follow them religiously

away. Today is the first true winter
day, the sun won’t rise against

green and gray as I get dressed
and drive to the hospital.

I didn’t throw it in,
but I didn’t swim out, either.

If you are the ocean,
certain, certain,

then I am the bird,
open, open;

we share no common
phases or forces.

Without some heaviness
it’s hard to generate lift,

and without lift we’re left
treading, treading,

so where’s the shame
in being an albatross

around a neck,
weighty, weighty,

in not being slight
in not being forgotten

in not forever
waiting, waiting?

Sometime in the night the fever broke
and morning dawned cool,

drops of rain adhering to the handrail
like blisters, the maples greener

for their washing.  One to the west
is turning yellow, one to the east

is not, instead rusting in spots,
anthracnose, a disease of trees.

It’s hard to shake the feeling
that this winter might be rougher

than the last, maybe blight
is only blight but if it’s a sign

what else could it mean?

Stranger still are the fever dreams
arriving with dangerous vibrancy,

the wheels come wholly off,
a restless sleep,

not restful when the room’s edges
keep smearing off

in half-conciousness,
I am too cold.  I am too hot.

Everything else real is muddled,
and everything unreal is not.

I haven’t been out east in weeks

but the last dream I dreamed last
night was of the coyote;

with unreal immediacy I watched,
unobserved, floating by as it prowled
the porch boards,

emboldened by the late state
of sunrise. I know it goes there,
leaving clumps of fur and scat,

but only when we’re gone,

until now I’d never seen how close
it comes to the glass door,

assesses its reflection, having moved
from cautiousness to callousness
a long time ago,

it doesn’t flinch but moves along
as the day opens up, a pink dawn
until my alarm wakes me up,

returns me to the cold dark cave
of my room

Now, something’s completely gone.
Though it’s sunny outside

it’s fundamentally changed.
No more heat. And yesterday,

melodramatic clouds
threatened downpours,

occasionally made good
on it. But all fall really is

is the short-lived
adolescence of winter,

at least here
it gets old fast.

This morning can’t win.
Though the doorstep fog
has cleared a cat drowses
next to the dryer vent,
exhaust curling like breath
into the stillest of air,
nothing else moves;
no one is there.

Except a squirrel
trying an open garage
and finding only paint cans,
a long held dream but
nothing to eat, only
smooth sealed metal
cool against his hands.

Nothing else, he moves
cautiously on, sticking
to the bushes, avoiding
the void beneath this
pale, dead sky.

He makes the tree.
I stay inside.

Some acts are unretractable–
take out the nail

and you still made
a hole.

I’d rather be
a hammer,

if I only could,
I surely would,

but is it action
or inaction

that makes one
most culpable?