Haze

The sun hangs lower in the sky today

Than I recall it hung a year ago.

The clouds obscure it with their tired gray;

Perhaps that's why it now appears so low.

Or maybe I have moved without my knowing

To some exotic and more northern clime

Where even summer sun is not caught showing

Its face above the hills, and cannot climb.

Perhaps today, just once (or now, forever),

I'm just a little taller than I was

Lifted above the sun by my own lever.

Or maybe it seems lower now because 

I am a little sadder, and the sky 

Responds to how I feel, and won't ask why.

Sun

The dog has found a sunbeam, where

She doesn't worry about life.

She seems to lack a single care,

Forgetting hunger, pain, or strife.

She sits and lounges her limbs out

Her belly flat against the floor

Her tail still flipping roundabout

And slapping carpet more and more.

She's ceased to pant; her tongue is still;

Her eyes are closed in ecstacy;

She loves the sun and drinks her fill

As comfortable as she can be

Until her awful owner shuts

The curtain. Oh, she hates my guts.

Canals

My love is like a mighty river's flow

That runs on unimpeded to the sea;

My love is like the current, great but slow,

Imposing in its own immensity.

My love is like the flood that, when it rains,

Expands the river out of its known course

And though it may cause unexpected pains

Will irrigate the land with its great force.

My love is like meanders that swing wide

And circle back to its first course again;

My love is like the high banks that abide 

To house the settlements of hopeful men.

And like those men, I dig my own way out

To channelize my love past fear or doubt.

People Watching

There is a minor pleasure in observing;

In being near, but not quite in, a scene.

For some it may be awkward or unnerving

To worry that their seeing may be seen,

But let it be: let the observed observe.

My watching pleasure needs not to foreclose

Another's. Better--they deserve

The same as I. The pleasure grows

Not from some sense of exclusivity 

But from the knowledge that our world is shared,

That I and they are present equally

Our souls both hidden or perhaps both bared.

I sit and watch the people, and the pleasure

Comes from our shared experience of leisure.

Le Metro

The metro is the city. Take New York:

It never sleeps, although sometimes it should.

Boston's Green Line, modeled on a fork,

Splits like its city lines. Vancouver could

Like all its trees and mountaintops

Survive without a human presence. Broad

Industrial Chicago puts its stops

Where everyone can see them. London's odd

Because it's first, and thinks it did it best;

DC's a grand and new experiment;

The BART a convoluted, sprawling mess;

Seattle's not quite sure what "metro" meant.

And having surveyed this, and rode them all,

I ask: why are there two in Montréal?

Pause

I do not much like waiting. No, not much.

I'd rather run around the block twice--thrice--

(Getting all sweaty, limping, forced to clutch

My aching side) than sit in a nice

And shady bus stop. Let me act and do:

Don't make me pause, no matter if it matters;

The time it takes to catch up and review 

May be important, but leaves me in tatters.

I do not operate in mindful sloth

But run, run, run, so much that I've been mocked

For running when all others would be loath

And for forever going off half-cocked.

I've done the thinking, well before I moved

Now let me go, and let that thought be proved.

ppm

The air is solid, tickling my throat

As it goes down, like taffy when I chew:

It slides and sticks, the sticking makes it coat,

The coating makes the breathing hard to do.

And I am well; I have no normal trouble;

I waste no time on thinking about air.

Imagine those outside my little bubble,

Who live in normal times in need of care,

And think of how their breath is catching short,

How every intake must become a labor

That as it births still threatens to abort

As each half-lung leans hard upon its neighbor

And threaten to collapse because the smoke

Has turned the air now thick enough to choke.

Altijd

When I consider where my life will go

And how I'll choose to occupy my days,

Some things seem so uncertain, like a haze

Hovers between us, so I cannot know

What I'll be like--or how I ought to grow.

Then all at once, descending like the blaze

Of summer suns, you burn away the grays

And I can bask within your evening's glow.

The future would mean nothing without you.

I don't mean that I couldn't live alone

Or that you have to live your life for me

But that when I consider what I'll do

You give it context; like a crystal grown 

Upon a matrix, you're stability.

250*

It has not been 250 years.

A nation, once declared, must still be won

And that accomplished may still be undone

By ignorance and squabbles, hates and fears.

Once signatures are dry, the task appears:

To make them true--not finish what's begun,

But to begin. The war is still to run,

And then the peace, with its own dangers, nears.

Republics are not nearly automatic:

Perhaps, like watches, they too must be wound.

The declaration--grand, intense, emphatic--

Is nothing on its own but words and sound.

But it can be a horologe's schematic:

The grand ideals are still there to be found.

Awkwardness

Sometimes I do not know what I should say;

And yet I'm sure that I speak anyway.

It's often words I do not quite believe 

Or that some social script suggests to me;

The way you speak to those who need to grieve,

Or those who wish impossibility;

How you converse with people you don't know 

And have no urge or need to meet again

But whose approval you still need, and so

You have to be polite to them, just then.

All sorts of conversations must exist

To make this world keep spinning round and round.

I have to have them. I'll just make a list,

And hope to get through each one safe and sound.

Juneteenth Views

The sky is bluer than the flag below it;

The corn is greener than the cash it brings;

The clouds are decoration, and they know it;

The trees a fringe that to the edges clings.

The vision knit together is a wonder:

A countryside unequalled anywhere.

Let nothing that may come rend it asunder;

Let it remain forever whole and fair.

Yet mankind, who has set forth field and tree,

Will also threaten what has been created;

The corn a battlefield may sometime be,

If violence uncaged be not abated,

And bodies may be buried in the soil 

That once spoke to the beauty of our toil.

Amtrak

I really, really want to take the train.

I can't convey through text how desperately:

It scratches certain itches in my brain

To travel distance locomotively.

I have, in other countries, been transported

Across two hundred miles in two hours;

It was a case of see it, say it, sorted:

Yet here it seems forever past our powers.

We would bemoan the distances we cross

And claim it impossible to better;

Yet history reveals such claims are dross:

Our past did not experience this fetter.

I ask a simple question in this rhyme:

Can we not run a goddamn train on time?

Lilacs

No matter where I am or how I feel

No matter if the day was good or bad;

No matter what experience I had,

Or if the world around me seems unreal;

No matter if the sunlight seems to peel

The surface off my eyelids 'til I'm mad;

Or I conceive myself an undergrad

With hair unwhitened and a spine of steel;

No matter how I age or I decay,

No matter how I joy in my delights;

No matter if I struggle every day

Or wander wondering past wondrous sights,

The smell of lilacs, no matter how mild

Will bring me back to when I was a child.

Void

I do not mind the dark. Why should I? What

About the time of sleep and rest should be

A terror? Instead I find, deep in my gut,

A warmth, promoting my serenity.

I do not mind the light; it too is calm,

Not overheated and not overbright:

A source of joy and gladness, and a balm

To my desire to match day to night.

It is the interchange between the two

That makes the whole of my existence sing;

Neither exclusive, both with work to do:

A constant, intermingled, single thing.

Why should I fear the dark, or light? It's neither

That would be terror. I will live with either.

Cows

Assume, if you are able, that a cow

For every purpose of our calculation

Is spherical. Don't worry about how;

This is no matter for your perspiration.

It's merely an assumption we can make

To ease the calculations we must do;

A cow's a sphere; a ball, a point; a rake,

A line. We take them to be such because

The real truth of the friction and the angles

Is not the point of what this physics does:

Reality to often merely mangles

Pure kinematic truth and certainty:

Let life be perfect, cows live spherically.

All Good Gifts

If everything around us is from God

How can we discriminate between them?

The beautiful, the normal, and the odd

As we have lived, and loved, and seen them

Are equally of God; so is the pain,

The awfulness of every worsening day

That presses like a thunderstorm, the drain

Of walking weary under skies of grey.

If all of it is God's, how can we choose?

A holy favor means a holy fault.

The good we gain; the good we also lose

Collectively define divine gestalt.

And yet this does not mean we cannot tell.

It only means we must turn ill to well.

Prop

So many things would fall down without you:

The blanket pile, of course, you're nestled in;

The stack of books you're leaning on, a few

Scattered on top that you meant to begin;

The dog stretched out across your lap, still snoozing,

Her little limbs all flopped in full abandon;

The child beside you, obviously using

Your lap as a support for her to land on

Each time she bounces on the couch's springs;

The house itself, though that's a metaphor;

The very world, which only hums and sings

Because you're in it, I am fairly sure.

I know I'd fall, because, you know, I fell

Long years before: I fall with you as well.

Agit

Let us go then, out into the dark

And let the light within us make it bright.

Let us wander through a shadowed, empty park

Where no one else has dared to pass the night 

Dancing around trees that loom above 

Like silent guardians of the evening's grace

(Their roots sink deep, and show their endless love

For all the plants with whom they share the space).

Let us not resist the lure of going out

Simply because the outside is not home;

Let us push aside all diffidence or doubt

Of what might come when we begin to roam;

Let's imagine that the outside will be sweet

As where we come to rest our weary feet.

Age

Sometimes I want to freeze the world in ice

Like some immense Steve Rogers and exist

Forever in one moment. To throw dice

And never have them land; the morning mist

Still lingering, unburnt by coming day;

The puff of air exhaled before my face

Not yet dispeled; the sky the bluish-grey

Of early morning, when the clouds embrace

The rising sun, but are not yet outclassed.

I think, then, it would be a wondrous thing

If time stood still, and hours never passed

And you and I could couch a while and cling.

But if it had before, how would I see

The laugh lines from you laughing back at me?

Ignore

Pretend, if you would so much humor me,

That everything I tell you is a lie.

Imagine nothing that I've said, that I

Have whispered in the dark of night, to be

At all the truth. Declare the fallacy

Of all confessions I have made. Decry

The falsity of man, in me, and sigh

That nothing good is true. Please don't ask why.

I'd hate to lie again. Just let it go;

Believe this much of me, and think me so,

So we can free ourselves of what I've said.

It's better thus, and better you don't know 

The reasons. I won't jerk you to and fro:

Pretend, and let the past become the dead.