So goodbye April
you were full of unfamiliar shapes
like maple leaves and sunny days
and familiar ones like the sense
that I need to get organized
and road construction and rainy days
we tumble through the weeks aiming
to be good enough for each other
and apply ourselves to the hope
that each other will be good enough for us
and we for ourselves most of all
as May comes and summer glows in the distance
let us be good enough for ourselves
beautiful flagstone
fine layering a strewing
of petals and husks
paisley it turns out
is at heart a type of twill
and chintz is a form of
calico which is cotton
on a rainy Monday each
pattern embosses the eyes
daffodils and irises
tiles and cylinders
how we love to repeat
modify embellish and repeat
again and I can’t say I mind
the patterns or the stories
collect the stories
and choose recipes
and remember the important things
like trees
next year I will have
forgotten again
but I like all the rituals
I can do in my own home
come and eat and fill
your cup and pour it out again
they tried to kill us
we’re alive
let’s eat
the trees will still be there
outside the window
working on new leaves
**
fending off and fending for
and finding ways of being
of some use to somebody
there’s a path to be found
between each alarming thought
towards appreciation
and maybe even towards action
out to the store
forsythia gleaming in the night
we chatter arm in arm and look towards summer
back from the store
a few drops followed by quite a few more
heads down chins dripping we walk home fast, faster
between corner and doorway showers lighten
I turn my face up to dripping sky
now that I can get out of the rain
wanting to linger
it’s always difficult to make the call
you never know as he says he
likes her already and interrupts to
talk about his eccentricities
this one may be down on his luck
may have seen suffering
skipped meds
and then it’s one hand on
the arm too much and
one simply doesn’t give a shit
anymore
***
plastic braids
boondoggle and
the tv and a tiny
food processor
from 1982 these
things stand out
from an evening
in a space where
(almost) everything
will not stay long
New York in April is
a Richard Scarry world
busy busy busy the barges and
fleets of electric bicycles
different characters moving
through parks and streets
the flocks of cherry blossoms
are resting on the boughs
before pushing on to soft
summer fruit and clouds
bustle past as though late for
engagements in Connecticut
sweeping the rain after them
so that drops linger dawdling
children in the sun
a knapsack at least lends some
agency to the wearer bounds the
problem in canvas but how it is
steeped in unearned normalcy
ignorantly fluent in power
a lifetime is not enough to give up
utterly and go blameless free
like a drunk shedding the shelter
of the bottle I will always
be recovering aspiring to
a better way of it all and me
delights of the day:
mist, laughter, easy commutes
of the night: friends, wine
***
some nested tasks: pick
up, drop off, load in, pick up,
load out, drop off, eat
***
mi toki pona
ona li toki pona
kulupu pona
This April the mice have invaded my life and thoughts.
They are shameless in my apartment, darting clear
through the middle of the room. Yesterday one ran straight
into my shoe, bounced off and continued on his way.
Now mice are everywhere with me. Every plastic bag
blowing across the road, every glint from a pot lid
grows whiskers and a tail. Pot lids at least are in the
kitchen. Why does my brain insist on worrying
about mice crossing city streets? I do not blink at
rats the size of badgers trundling through the subway tracks.
What do they say? Once stumbled into, twice shy?