Can I tell you?

Bird Watching

I’ve been watching birds-
counting Cardinals,
thinking of Harold while humming the
Eastern Towhee’s red-eye flight call.

Today I heard the crow’s song,
different than before, it sounded like you
singing in harmony with me-
a haunting siren’s song of
fledgling trickery.

Why did you fly back to me
when I am so happy?

April 10th

It’s day twenty-two.

Your knees are dried bloody and you let her see.

Your mother knows your secrets now

and she saw you, didn’t she?

April 8th

April 8^th and the day sounds lucky but

it’s not.

John Prine went home and we

received rotten cabbage in our rations.

We couldn’t save a single fruit.

We missed the pink moon

and we used all our string to sew

the wounds on our backs back together.

You’ve been keeping count

and I hadn’t thought about it until just now-

when I slow down, when my one-liners run out,

what will you make of me?

April 8^th sounds like a lucky day but

              it’s not.

When my roots turn to rot 

will you send me home?

If Pain is a Lesson, What do I make of this Mastery?

The other night you told me how you

learned about suffering

when you studied hot yoga

in Mexico one summer.

We smoked cigarettes (mine menthol, yours red)

 and I said

you’ve lived so many lives and

you said

you have too.

I thought about Watson, Illinois.

All the small spaces

where I learned about suffering

in so many places and in

so many lives.

Have I died so many times?

I just don’t learn my lessons.

April 2nd, 2020

April 2^nd, 2020

Two weeks in quarantine and everything is a dance now.

We waltz across the wooden floors toward the open window,

careful to appreciate the passing pastel pink

and lavender paintings performed each sunset.

We do not believe in god but we believe in something.

Sometimes I don’t understand irony. (Thanks Alanis.)

      I wonder if it is this-

I was cut to the raw root, pruned

and potted again and against all odds,

I’ve taken bloom. My scalp is healthy.

The other plants pass disease.

The rest of the world is dying or crumbling

like the Twin Towers or Kinetic Sand Castles.

I am a rose under a vase like in Beauty and the Beast.

Safe in my own glass castle growing green.

Is this a fever dream?

Is this the hook, line and sinker?

I get to taste true love like bait

before we are gutted and filleted

on ice skating rinks to keep us cool.

Oh well,

I don’t care.

The joke is funny and I’m busy

Laughing.