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.

Slef

I am no better than I have to be
Nor am I, at my worst, as good as that;
When called to be much better, I am flat,
A harsh note out of perfect melody.
There is but small hope for improving me,
Since I must do it as self-autocrat
And all the cheap solutions are too pat
To help me help myself. Alarmingly,
However, those around me seem to think
That there is something in me more than this
And tell me as I claim I'm past my power
That I am not, as long as I don't sink
Into a self-discouraging abyss
But let myself be me, and therefore tower.

Inferno

As I return from a relaxed vacation
Flying a metal tube up in the air
I pass above extensive conurbation
That seems to be entangled everywhere.
How can I tell where New York finally ceases
Or where Connecticut begins to be?
Where is New Jersey? In how many pieces
Should I divide the single thing I see?
Up here it seems so easy to unite
What those below believe to be distinct,
And would, if told to come together, fight
Rejecting all suggestion they are linked.
But which is true, you ask? I cannot tell
Perhaps we need the circles in our hell.

By Cause

I cannot look directly at the sun
Yet I am sure it shines, since I can see;
The air I breathe is visible to none
Nor can I show the proof of gravity
Except to say I'm still upon the ground
And breathing, so they both are surely here,
Just as the ambience of petty sound
Proves something presses on my waiting ear.
The wind unseen can cut, afflict, or balm,
Demonstrating as it does its presence
Remembered even in the dead of calm
Despite frustration at its evanescence
So is it, love, observing you apart:
You must exist, since I still have a heart.

King Street 3

Here beside the shores of Puget
Where the ocean meets the land
I'm aware that tempus fugit
Time must fly and cannot stand.
As the sky sweeps down to meet me
Fog and cloud and dripping mist
Family too will rush to meet me
Fortune hardly to be missed.
Yet I find it something lacking
If alone in lacking her
Whom I could not, in my packing,
Bring along, though I'd prefer.
But since she would be afar
Anyway: well here we are.

Not Platte

Why the hell are all these rivers brown?
Do the fish, perhaps, prefer it so?
Or are they, like the landscape, beaten down
By wind and ice and unforgiving snow
Until the very essence of their flow
Is murked by the effluence of the land?
I'm sure that it must help the crops to grow
For there they flourish, as if by command,
But can it really, on the other hand,
Be best to have the water so opaque,
The color of an almost-wettened sand
Or peanut butter malted chocolate shake?
I do not know, but as it passes through
It bothers me it isn't very blue.