Advent in Ferguson

                        The good ones wander Main Street

                        with hooded air and swirling leaves

                        at the end of the very same year.

                        They occupy undoing and seek

                        their own unresting change.

                        Some slump down bricks and

                        alleyways into digital nowhere,

                        into the acrid blooming of more

                        torrid tales. Media follow them

                        unscrupulously with quaking yellow glares,

                        pry beneath their private doors,

                        issue burning statements with

                        sizzling depictions of

                        lost or thwarted worlds.

                        Some rally in unlisted ways suffering

                        the darkness of amnesia and social

                        disgrace. Some squat down

                        or bend their knees to pray,

                        some squeeze their triggers,

                        some stretch above this fray

                        into the slant of longer battle  

                        with deep rooted parameters

                        and old prophetic kings, their

                        hearts and shutters all a whir.

                        Talk of bullets in the old sky

                        digs new holes for a town

                        like the random sized holes

                        in leavened bread. They make

                        defense feel like reason

                        when the city's cup runs dry.

                        Some command the right to walk

                        with candles in their mouths

                        to make vigilance seem more real

                        with utter silence and finger flames

                        burning. We need more Spirit now

                        in order for us to unify,

                        to listen, to follow a sizzling brown star

                        who will emerge as promised

                        through the bulk of this

                        meandering heaven’s fog.

                              Maple Trees

                              can’t bring the world close enough

                              to fill their sample hands

                              bare to the center of the chest

                              honest as tree limbs who shed

                              their savage red life’s leaves

                              in trade for winter dirt.

                              They beseech us to speak
                              of more significant things,

                              of gratitude that spins into

                              intangible kindness when no one seeks

                              to be housed or colored or fed.

                              At the same time in the same trials

                              in the same composted way we

                              all dig for savored grace. This is why

                              breathing never leaves us, it only

                              dissolves into thin white clouds

                              that reveal the real soul of the world,

                              bear every breaking thing,

                              curl into a naked blue sky made

                              of the same wet words that

                              desire the same summer light

                              the same forgiving
                              clean water rain

                              as us.

                  Post Season Play

                  “I’m dying more than we all are,”

                  he said, chuckling over thoughts

                  of his old ball glove hanging like a tired leather moon 

                  in a museum somewhere.

                            Bottom of the 8^th, two outs, sponsored

                            by Ponder's Buick. Pitch is low.

                            Swing and a miss. Strike two.

                  “It won’t go easy now,” he breathed. “It

                   never will.”

                   During game breaks he watched the lawn crew 

                   work against the nodding wind,

                   power blowers strapped to their young backs,

                   time and leaves blown into large gusty piles 

                   with autumn gilt like rust,
                   the color of sun at dusk. 

                   

                   He sang “Blue Christmas” with the commercial
                   now stuck inside his old white head. 

                   He summoned his pickled Elvis voice,

                   the one he used for summer field amusement.

                   His mind gyrated ankles instead of hips,

                   a gag he devised for his wife when his

                   mangled knee was racked high on a chair, his

                   leg propped up to keep the swelling down.

                   A thousand merry chickadees swooped in
                   like nurses or monks or maybe
                   a hundred, or maybe twenty two.

                   They took to the window ledge like family, 

                   to the wide green lawn, the flower garden,
                   the main road home.

                 
                   When workers and crowds of leaves had gone,

                   the chickadees beat their tiny wings with rapid fire applause

                   full of tiny beaks and black eyes
                   masked like comedic bandits 

                   looking for a crack in the glass.

                 
                   He reached out to take them in,
                   to touch them through the window

                   to see if they might sing.
                   

                   “It won’t go easy now,” he told them.

                   “It never will.” They didn't hear him

                   in his tiny bed, nor the curtains, nor the silent

                   radio. He was elsewhere and warm
                   when the Pennant was finally decided, the season lost 

                   and won, the birds already gone.
                 

                             Elegy for Roscoe Simon

                             How strange

                             the search for loss

                             again, or more

                             than this.

                             - - - 

                           
                             How many times

                             he scraped against this

                             hungry cupboard door

                             so well rehearsed,

                             so now well fed.

                             Old squirrels dig their holes unhindered

                             in the yard. Wild geese

                             slide across the breeze like

                             clusters of sideways leaves

                             scrolling hard ground 

                             for the dead.

                             Cold blankets

                             are tucked in place.

                             Maple leaves fall

                             more golden than before. Ripe

                             apples turn more than red.

                             What thief 

                             would come so randomly

                             to sniff these empty chairs,

                             a myriad of playful things

                             abandoned in their corners;

                             who would spook a flock of
                             thundering tiny sparrows

                             from their yews outside

                             his old living window?

  

                             Silence

                             rubs its desirous fur

                             against my autumn legs

                             for a scratch

                             on its needy head of wind,

                             its gust of whiskers and twigs
                             its patter of chronic malcontent.

                             Finger strokes of clouds

                             curl and curl for a nap like feathers
                             on the tops of soft upholstered air.

                             A second hand clicks,

                             a pall of wind bemoans the window,

                             an old tree bares its branches.

                           
                             The room, now empty,

                             yawns itself to sleep,

                             the fresh white sleep
                             of solitude and long dreams. 

              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.