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.

september

It is cool in the
mornings again! Dew
catches on spider
webs! Crickets stuff their
hands in their pockets!

“taller today”

Growing
up is
such a
pain

leo

for Mom & Dad

It’s August, and your sign lounges
underneath the sun of summer,
lolls a lazy tongue, and rumbles
distant thunder in its throat. How
lovely that one month can bear as
at scratch of claw and tip of tail
your two holidays, between them
the long hot plain of plain hot days,

and while you sit beside a camp
fire seasoning the summer air
with ember memory, above,
in gaps between still leaves, pairs of
fireflies circle silently where
in half a year your sign will rise
and rampant bare its broad and star–
studded chest, gape its maw and roar.