M. G.,

It was years ago in the A-frame,
beside a cold bachelor's lake

that was clogged with reflections
of raving burst-headed trees,

that we laughed as Jake threw up
the Genesee river in the midnight sink.

When you caught your breath
you told me how you had traveled,

how you'd found a woman and gone to her,
it was the most you'd ever shared with me.

But this letter cannot reach you, friend,
because Jake just told me that you died.

My head fills with the numberless times
I drove by your long-lawned house,

or knocked beers in a rampant yard
while fires fractured dull dark.

I consider that love is a terrible thing
when I see what it's done to my friends -

it didn't rise as sweet slow dough,
it wasn't a shyly signed valentine -

it was a Petri dish of troubled sleep
that bred malformed dreams;

it was a crocodile's jagged jaw-drag,
it was the dross of unwise prayers.

Well, hell: let this letter remind them all
of that barking laugh amid the stray pines

as Jake birthed a twilit river from his teeth.
Your Friend, Evan.

~
the night starts here,
the night starts here
in the dunes,
fixed in time;
incipient waves falling into place,
their subtle purpose
to roll over and sing;
the fountainhead above us,
like it's above the shore,
attaching softness to a shell.

we blew on a dandelion
and the whole world disappeared;
love is a mysterious shape,
love is a remembered rhythm.

I have trembled
my way deep,
I'm a guest in here,
drinking at the stream,
seeking bliss in
the plural homemade kiss:
peppermints and orchid rain.

we please the night,
we please the night in interlude,
and it merrily leaves us that strand
of pearls called "good morning."
~

On my walls hang two pieces of art;
large canvases boldly splashed
with colour, stroke upon stroke form vivid arcs.

I wish I had kept my father's paintbrushes,
they were tools of masterpieces.
From them, my strokes could have made faces flush
and inspired songs and poetry; love?

*
But, perhaps ‘twas a blessing to create with unique expression and freedom.

little leaf, reaches for the sky.

rides the wind, hugs the sun.

dreams with a voice of love,

only knows love.

delights in simple joys.

little leaf, dreams of an ice cream cone.

(a child at play in the park.)

Four years is a  long, long time
To watch what we’ve long worked for
Erode bit by bit or in big chunks.
How will we survive the watching
While being headed off at every curve
By sycophants who stand in line
To get in on the unearned spoils
Of ravaging ecology, economy
The middle class and truth.

Fourteen hundred and sixty days:
What can we hide in basement corners
To keep it from being broken or soiled.
What can we bury in the back yard garden
To know it’ll still be there for us to use
When the ravaging is over and we can breathe
And try to reassemble democracy
From the leftovers and the cast-asides
That evilness bequeathed to us on leaving.
                 ljm