advisory

The warning from the weather service came:
tomorrow you will be confronted with
the unfamiliar memory of a year
ago, when just before Thanksgiving Day,
unseasonably early, fell such gifts
of snow that homebound busybodies feared

for their commute, and in the cold the trees
stood braced and shivering beside the road,
and frost flocked cedar limbs resplendent in
an alb and stole of quietness were leaned
long suffering above the low cold stones
of Brush Point. Following your tracks through drifts

of snow like fallen waves, you’ll crest the last
to see a plot prepared for burial,
dug down to dirt and clouded in a mist
of well intended words: forgiveness asked,
a benediction lingering to fall
to earth as gently as a parting kiss.

epiphany

Prior conceptions
go up in a flash,
the gospel acted
out as long ago
when no one could read

and to be exposed
to the word of God
required something
overdramatic
for an offering,

embroidered robes or
feats of memory,
faith was sustained as
extinguishable
shivering candles

at night were maintained
for the dead by the
dying, when shadows
lengthened and children
struggled to attend

their eyes flickering
from ceiling to floor,
catching a sight of
the preacher’s hand raised
to stifle a yawn

“in transit”

And so I’m on my way to see my sister,
my sister who has cancer, a man says.
The driver nods. And I have cancer myself
you know, the brain, I shouldn’t be alive
today, except — He never gives us any
thing more than we can handle, yes, she knows —
But who decides when too much pain is enough?
I do my time, get out of jail and there
she is, about to die, he says. A quiet
persists too long. She nods. But here you are,
she says, a kindness none of us can manage.
To look another person in the eye
is difficult; to be ignored is brutal.

new year

A double yolk! Auspicious signs
begin at breakfast for a year
of heartiness. The sky is clear
enough, the cat slept through the night,

the Hawks have lost their final game —
the universe, in other words,
is not today as we deserve
and will be better once arranged

for peace and not convenience, but
it is familiar. The insane
incessant chattering of lame
excuses falters over what

is possible, the posture of
the new year upright broad and long.
A resolution, then: when wrong
admit it. Never put above

good sport the serious. Display
whenever possible the same
true face to everyone. Repay
with interest the given day.

chaconne

Ascending
figures meet
descending
harmonies

to make a
melancholy
sort of piece,
the varied

incidents
of human
feeling on
display in

moving and
unchanging
patterns: as
a frost-filled

lake at night
reflects the
uncounted
faces of

the moon, as
a slow dance
teaches one
how to step,

as dawn comes.
The only
modulation
is to brief

unfurling
hopefulness,
and then it
is music

once again.
A player
under spot
light thinking

fast, figures
ascending
in the dark
toward the

exits, and
a murmur
underneath
it all like

a river
coursing in
its banks, a
distant flood

boy with piccolo

(John French Sloan)

Too pleased with absent-minded praise to let
it show, you carefully arrange your face
into a picture of the boy I met
outside my door, his collar turned up, braced
against the silent and unflattering street,
and you refuse to play again. The note
reverberates between us, dies. I see
it anyway: a quick and quavering mote
descending out of shadow into light
and out again, a grin you can’t conceal
that knows so much at such an age. When I
record you I will paint the pride you feel
as blush upon your warming cheeks, as thin
and dextrous fingers poised, a breath drawn in.