On Me

My heart cannot achieve my mind's desires
Because it counsels (oh pernicious mind)
A calming patience that would bank the fires
Of love's frustration. If I could but find
A way to make my heart at last resigned
To know she will return, perhaps I could
In humble patience sit here unrepined.
But no; though I assure myself it would
Be good for nothing but my own self-good
I cannot sit here without fidgeting
In my annoyance that my lover should
Be anywhere but here. Soon she will wing
Her swift way back; but never swift enough
To stop my heart from grumping in a huff.

Schroedinger

What am I when she is not here? Who knows?
Like cats tortured by scientists I lie
Defined by what an observation shows
But unobserved. And thus I live and die
At once, forever tangled in myself.
The time may move, the clock may tick along
But it is hidden on the cluttered shelf
And I can only guess the hour wrong
Until she's come again. I cannot tell
The chimes of midnight from the luncheon bell
The Geiger counter from the microwave
The muted TV from the silent grave
Until she can return, and see, and make
The quantum sleeper in my soul awake.

Iron

Western New York is pretty nowadays
If you should happen to be fortunate.
Last week's snow is but a shining glaze
On which the sunbeams in their glory sit.
The snow that falls is not a heavy load
The people here are not at all put out
It barely lies at all upon the road
The day's commute is not in any doubt
But walk a mile away and look again
Gaze at the distant treetops if you can
For they are hidden from the sight of men
By lake effect, that in an hour began
And by the hour it leaves us will put down
Several feet of snow. Also the town.

1/28

There were some things I thought we all believed
Like "send those homeless, tempest-tost, to me"
Or just "America, land of the free."
But now I find that I have been deceived.
The wanderer, the lost, the refugee
Cannot rely on us; are not reprieved
But made to suffer once again. Are we
Afraid of those we already received?
If so, then let us all depart once more;
For who among us, though ourselves born here
Descends from those who never immigrated?
We all passed through the open golden door.
Where would we be if we had then been hated--
Blocked by an unthought and illegal fear?

Advent

The Christmas music on the radio
Used to annoy me. Frankly, it still does.
But overlaid upon it is the glow
Of thinking about you. The little buzz
Of sharp annoyance that I used to feel
Is now transmuted into just a sigh
That mixes into it the very real
Discovery that when I hear it I
Am, by its mere existence, turned to you.
I cannot help but in that moment see
That you, and every little thing you do,
Are more important, more alive to me
Than that which used to make me ill at ease
And thus the music finds a way to please.

A is for...

No, I have never been a Hamilton.
At most and at my best I am a Burr:
Watching and waiting for the slow-built stir
Of something calmly and obliquely done
Though no less fully. What I have begun
Will finish. What I stop will not recur.
It's true, I must admit I might prefer
To be th'eclipse and not the setting sun;
To have them marvel at my very sight
As at a wonder, point and gawk and stare,
Instead of bidding all to all goodnight
Without surprise, as if I were not there.
Yet which is greater: sudden unchecked power
Or influence on every single hour?

On a Plurality already Forgotten

Life must, although it feels so wrong, go on,
Though everything about us is just worse;
And I, as ever, process it in verse.
The joy and hope I had is sadly gone
And dark has swallowed what appeared a dawn-
A blessing harshly tuned into a curse.
But vain it seems it will be to rehearse
The loss. The sun itself is pale and wan.
We must go on. In pain if not in bliss
Never forgetting that we hoped for her
Nor letting them pretend we were not there.
Let no one think when they remember this
She was not worthy, or we did not care,
Or there were more of them. Insist we were.

Cubs

There is a world in which we never left:
We moved uptown, became what you become
When everything is usual. Bereft
Of any reason to do otherwise,
We settled in--a common, routine hum
Of day to day. What everyone would do:
A situation full of unsurprise.
I was I had been, you were as you;
We got a dog we walked beside the lake
(You're still allergic, so no cat in sight).
I wonder what those two of us would make
Of what just happened. Would it be delight,
Or would they wish that they were us, away
From all the madness sweeping yesterday?

Fall

To look at her has always been enough,
No matter what is up, to make me smile;
And if she should, after a little while,
Glance up at me, it would take sterner stuff
Than I am made of not to slightly puff
And turn the smile to a grin. I file
Such moments in my memory, a pile
I dive into whenever things get rough
And wallow in remembrance of her look.
I cannot now pretend I do not pray
With every glance at her that I can steal
That she will once again turn from her book
And brighten up a cold October day
Indulging my continued mute appeal.

Suburbia

The sprawling joy that is contentment seems
In many registers to fall just short.
It's not the desperation past alloy
That toys with them that wander out to court,
Nor the ecstatic and electric charge
That pulses through the lover newly won,
Whose every movement tells the world at large
That he is sure he is the only one.
No, it has passed beyond such commonplaces
Inhabiting the very earth and air
Such integral and unacknowledged spaces
That to some eyes it almost isn't there.
Yet without air or earth, where would we be?
If I lack you, in that place search for me.