Summer

2008

Summer is gone
winter arriving in all its whiteness

Everything I had in summer
gone too

Desire, Hope

you

me

What remains
is left unsaid.

The World is Too Much

September 12, 2008

The world is too much

Wanting to participate; yet
remaining detached

I want to care about words, the world
coming back to the car payment; rent
the things that never change

I am a pretender
packing my lunch in the morning
wanting to live to live in a world where

Thoughts matter

Can love and kindness exist here?

Living Western; For Now

I know my family wonders,

why I live here, not there,

Meaning, living eastern.

with a lower case e

when in the west does the east seem inferior

when easterners don’t acknowledge west of the Missouri

and here the state is pronounced miz-our-a

I look out the window,

The poet’s window eastern poet Billy Collins writes

back in the day, was a wall
and laugh at poet humor.

I see the sage, mule deer
through the poet's window
where a lone moose, stands in the front yard, chomping on

wheat, as dogs bark
it is immense, and beautiful, and mythic.

This scene in the Colorado mountains may not have happened
if I lived eastern
although moose wander in northern New England

And, me, being a poet, and writer

and a moose lingering in my yard

and me, having two dogs
certainly seems western, in my mind.

I walk to the ancient rock
a mile jaunt from my house
looking down to the Fraser River and
into the Fraser Canyon where
Union Pacific railroad tracks parallel the flowing river

I wonder
how long will I be here.

I don’t know the answer and hope there is no answer

But know the pull of family
and being singular, and family loved

I will be back,

Back East, Back Home, Back.

For now, this place

This landscape of mountains, river, wildlife,
this harsh, arid, unbending space

That spared my dogs, that makes me write

That made me, me

is home.
 I stare out my western window to a blue sky
and see my own geography

of hope. 

That Day

Originally published Diverse Voices Quarterly

She tells me it’s the isotopes in the air

That make me grumpy

grey, white air

After 14 days of sunshine

The change in air and landscape

causes lethargy

Becoming unproductive

Unhappy

And while people I know

Wait for test results

for husbands

for children

paychecks

I just wait for snow

and sun

on the cusp of happiness