City Cider

              Parched city blacktop leads 

              past the busker playing hard blues 

              outside the hardware store today. I push through

              the old wooden doors for plumber’s putty

              to seal the lurking drain. 

              Hard city bouncing, living wooden stairs,

              internet saturation, dripping spigots make

              water circles stain the easy wood floor.

              I wonder about these old red brick

              apartment walls, if they might alarm

              the room with their odd uneven

              mortar sections missing. This

              is no factory, no random city strain. We simply

              sit and listen over traffic on headphones

              while the city boom unveils.

              A city man flops below in a happy feathered suit,

              hawks glossy turkey coupons like last year
              to the whole wide street; likens his own

              false wisdom to daybreak; makes a few

              dark moves toward drivers with their cars turned down;

              keeps a little booze close to his bottled brown heart

              to keep himself from fading all in.

              After the turkey man I start to notice street signs

              and naked trees scratching rhythm to stretch the time.

              Dark finger limbs close in on winter sketches.

              Branches shake their black stubs empty and down low,

              reach up to erase the oiled rusty sky.

              Overhead again the train rackets by, passes quickly,

              brings the only calm to every city’s real dark dreams.

              At the holiday we’ll drink hard apple cider together

              into our phones, slough off our own difficult

              words, exchange photos with meaning this time,

              text outside the windows with whole grammar to

              reach for long gratitude, a sense of genuine art, deep friendship. I’ll

              slip a piece of glossy paper under my drink

              the way you used to do to prevent water rings

              from marrying the wood 

              and wonder what else
              you must be doing somewhere.

                  Firewood

                  Can’t distinguish 

                  gray wash of lake

                  darker than air 

                  or darker than water, darker

                  than gray wash
                  itself

                  Here it is Monday, brings

                  with it always this time of day

                  thoughts of disturbance

                  punching home 

                  Autumn is wet,

                  wetter than always.
                  Dark wet leaves stick

                  with drizzle to the rain, stick to
                  glass windows wetter than again
                  so come back

                  to the kitchen for lunch, 

                  coffee and the plasma of noon

                  Here we come again cool

                  standing on the chill veranda, fleece

                  jacket sleeves pointing west

                  toward the big churning

                  lake, to you, to the

                  solitude

                  you gave me, asking me

                  to follow

                  when I could

                  as soon as I kiss away

                  the dead wood, haul

                  it up the hill,

                  stack it in a row

                  at our old empty house
                  to burn

                  like every man should

                     Indoor Prayer

                     I eat granola

                     sitting in a yellow stare

                     of morning. Each window,

                     each bird, each dying flower can see

                     the whole world

                     from here.
                     The cat on my chair

                     intrudes, feigns interest in

                     my empty space--the empty bowl,

                     my spoon, my fingers,

                   
                     the squirrels and tree

                     with colored leaves that fall--beyond

                     the feathers of its own life.

                     This must be the secret: 

                     to contemplate autumn's colors

                     and wonder why the cardinals stop

                     outside this particular window
                     with bright orange beaks like leaves

                     to pluck crimson berries

                     from the thick green yews

                     and take their fill

                     before winter fully

                     arises.