Love is like driftwood
coming and going
with the tide

Love is a hurt animal
breaking the quiet
of the night

Love is like smoke
through a spiderweb
hard to hold onto

Love is pleasure, love is pain
like sunshine and rain.

I took a broom to seven generations
of moths in the spare bedroom closet
when I saw the red wool sweater in a box
with crossed white cloth baseball bats
sewn on the back and a # 1 patch smack
dab on the heart; the window to my past
shattered like glass on a long ago Saturday.

This morning at daybreak
and half awake still
he bundled his memories
on to a stretcher
and carried them up atop
Cothelstone hill
and sorted them through
for the moment he met her;

the memories bandaged,
the ones with bruised limbs,
he laid on the heather
like hospital beds
but the one of their first kiss
he threw to the wind
and asked the wind's help
for to help him forget..

and again, the gritty path,
for visiting the houses, ruined.
time fled and life stood still,
strangled in suspension points.

i come, to collect lonesomeness,
feed my senses upon bygones.

window sills to inner spaces.
motherhood.

there, the place of a fire,
the grime inks a flame in black,
silhouetted.

crock pots, iron pots,
cracked, bumped.
soup. boiling.smoking.
cendrillons wrinkling
by the fireplace
in yellowished orange blossom gowns.

a skeleton of a bed.

leaning roof.

a wall in blue.

the view from the back window.
the door to the backyard.

houses grow blind.
i come
to lend them my eyes.
willingly.

eventually they'll have me,
bind me, seed me,
a tree-creeper to sight
the swallows, tell them
we have a vacant eave
in a falling roof.

we shall not leave this world alive
as we’ll discover at the end of our life

yet even though we know all that
we still cannot imagine being not

Rotten turquoise hangs like
that promise I made to a
dead man.
I can hear the stars wailing
is heaven a truly peaceful place to rest?
In the fields of grief I found you,
picking dead flowers,
because you couldn't stand the sight of them
anymore
I asked you,
"Do you hear him?"
and the words fell like fists
into your silence,

"I died all alone."

I wonder if God
    sees our numbered
breaths, how many
     have been & how
many are left,
millions of digits
    shifting above
our heads;
the old woman
 on the park bench
        with just 500 left. 
The jogger with 100
   between now &
        tonight when he
will exhale
     for a final time.
I should scale mountains,
         stare at the sun
  make my amount
  count, every last one.

She reaches on tip toe
through windows and tries
to take hold of the outside
and gather it in,

for to feel the wind
and the pull of the tides
on the shrinking inside
of a life growing thin..

Night is an old blanket
asleep on my pillow.
Night is the mist on the river
covering the willows.
Night is the moon turning blue
brushing her hair.
Night is a black dress
on the back of my chair.

The phone rang after 2: 00 am.
Taking the steps in pairs
my legs faltered at his door -
paralyzed by denial.

Forcing myself inside,
I saw father's lifeless frame,
wired to synthetic everything -
a cold white line
still against the black.

My grief-racked soul
railed at that liar screen,
knowing his true lifeline
danced with passion  -
precision cutting with his lathe,
strumming passing chords
on his Gibson Les Paul.

That morning I knocked a ball
through a neighbor’s glass
I learned what honor meant.
With dad's steady hand
on my  shoulder,
I stammered  apologies
and learned to glaze a window.  

We'd play catch after supper.
or down franks and pop
at Briggs where the Tigers played.
Detroit is flying high this year:
God, how I wish
I could give the old man a call.

*September,  2006

Oh yes, I'm the last Defender
The end of a long, long line
Now it's goodbye, our fans wonder why
We've finally run out of time