Sunday, March 31, 2013

Housing IV


When cracked like a nut
No protection left
In the blinding, drowning world with
Silvery, prying devices,
Make like seeds and let fall

The hard withholdings of your outershell—
Bitter, brittle small—
And sink, sink deep
Into the ground around you—
Soft, cool, satiating—
To the root you will find growing until

Once your legs are strong
You stand up into the sun for the first time
Finding harsh rays the source of your energy
And storms refreshing to the core.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Housing III



Would you feel it
If I told you I wanted to hurt you?
Would you stop
If you heard the wedding had already past?
Would you come back
If you saw my suitcases, ready to leave.
Would you care
If you learned of your grandchildren on graduation day
                        Having excelled with a quarter of your brain
                        Both brilliant eyes.

We’ll never know how the future would have come,
Until death we’ll be apart,
Lunches missed and cancelled,
Letting ashes go to ashes
The dust of loves to settle on the mantle
Of the house I grew up in
Now sold twice over to indifferent markets. 

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Housing II




There’s my house.
I’ve just come from out of town.
Finally, a summer at home.

Weeds. Dead branches. Patchy grass.
Did they put a TV in the living room?
Don’t they know it’s for conversation?
Are those Christmas lights still up?

You leave for a year and all has changed.
I wonder how they’ve painted,
And how big my cypress has gotten.

The garage is open.
We did build this house.
It’s alright to invite myself in, right?
13 years we lived here.

You’d think new owners would respect
Instead of pulling—frantically?!—a gun.
I love that color though.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Housing I




A vision:
After years away, coasts and oceans apart,
You will return to the place from which you ran.
Your thoughts have never been far from it
Though the replacements have been spectacular.
You will fall in love, build a home, and take care
Of your parents. Life will be love and all is complete.

As you pull off the covers to turn on the coffee
Sober realizations. Most dreams never come true
And there’s no going home. It no longer exists.
I’m late leaving for the presentation. 


Sunday, March 3, 2013

Sitting There



 
I wish you were sitting here
To tell you all that happened
And ask how your weekend was,
How your sister is doing,
If your expectancy grows as hers does,
For an intimate future.

Why do you study alone,
Dark night by lamp light,
Cold to the finger on the window?
To read from the pages
And but find subversive sages
That delve us into soils
Where we are charged and adsorbed

By inner-sphere surface complexes,
To find bidentate our covalent bonds,
Stable through low activities,
Working at substitution to have and to hold
A place within structure to last
Throughout the ages or at least
The completion of this inexplicable titration.