A squirrel gathering
Nuts for the
Winter ahead
I collect my thoughts
Ready to store
Till summer comes

Because the morning has easier
Decisions, the old rise early,
Coming to our coffee and eggs
In bowed appreciation
Of the harvesters and hens,
Opening the paper
With bent fingers
And lowered expectations
Of good news, prepared
To see familiar departures
And a history of marriages
That have somehow survived.

no way to pay the city bills
and not much reason anymore
the turn of the key the lock's click
step back inside her mother's house
who'd tried hard to wait up but slept
instead in the small recliner
the television left on low
with food still warm in the oven
next morning unpacking her truck
she speaks to the neighbors next door
says it just didn't work out well
she saves the long story for me
brings pizza and knows i'll have beer
enough to go back twenty years

late
in lamplight's hiss
I sat and watched the attic dust
dance under spotlights cast
by moonbeam
          skylights
on a stage of memory
and forgetting