The Best Part of This Ride

is not the yellow lights
veering like starlings or
the smear of midway neon
neither is it the sweet
billow of deep fried
elephant ears or the lewd
bend of the corn dog
in the hand of the operator

centrifugal force
pinning us in a blue skylark
pulling you tight to me
your upturned cheek
is the best part
waving at strangers stuck
at the top of the Ferris wheel
every time we come around.

Greenfield Village

Henry Ford looms large
The length of River Rouge
Lower and Middle and Upper and Rouge River proper
Abraded by scars
Mouth cankered and scowling
Zug Island wrenched
To a permanent sneer behind
The kid gloved hand of his beloved Fairlane
Wandering Potemkin near the end
Head an empty lot webbed
In figure eights of snowy plaque.
We walked down the lane
From Firestone Farm
Past stubble field
Late one winter afternoon
Searching for the rope swing
In the old chestnut tree
Ordered hung there perhaps
By the old man himself.
I raced twilight
Edges dissolving
Sent you higher and higher
Prayed you would catch a glimpse
Of abiding light that silvers
The edge the world.

From A Neighbors Yard

Our house lies
at berth a liner
bleeding brass
spokes of light
that fan the pocket
porch tucked beneath
its snowy blanket
ashore to shovel out
on the trailing
edge of this storm
one eye on the gunwale
should she cast off lines
gauging my leap
through a child’s
ecstatic chalkboard scribble.

Turning Sixty Easter Morning After
Tearing Down the Old Shed

Christ and I; we rose
early, slowly, gingerly,
but we rose.

Crazy Horse Waits For Neil Young

Working their way through the Harvard Classics
half-moon reading glasses perched precariously
on their noses, dozing off from time to time
myoclonic twitches jolting hands and feet
that pine to plug in and mark time, dreaming

of that bait shop in the Maldives with a cooler
full of Bud where a man could do some combing
on the beach and wait for the sea to rise
or the pending call that sends them up the attic
stairs on a frantic search for their carry on

luggage and the worn out Converse and that  
lucky tee shirt from Rust Never Sleeps.  Never
a doubt, not one; well maybe a few but
the changes and chords will come wandering back
and the chorus to ******’ Up practically

sings itself, but in the meantime the checkbook
needs attention and a grandson’s home from Helmand
and isn’t the Lipitor running low?  
Two chapters left in Moby ****, they eye the
phone convinced again tonight’s the night.

Short Fiction

Before sitting down to write a story
I’ll think up a character with a few
miles on him but not so many as to
put him to sleep by nine leaving our eager
third person narrator little to do
but describe the layout of the bedroom
furniture of uneven pedigree
clutter enough to suggest spiritual disarray
well within acceptable limits
but worth keeping an eye on
suggesting sotto voce a second character
someone with a few hours to ****
in Wiesbaden or Banda Aceh
poling a spoon through black coffee
gone cold in a spider vein cup
the slightest shift of a knee twisting
the plot around the discovery of a memory
stick taped to the underside of his café table
“Marnie-LA” labeled in red.  
I write some muscular verbs to wrestle
him onto to an overnight train to Split and shift
to an unreliable first person singular
narrator who finds himself wincing
into a coffee cup at daybreak
feathery words crumpled on the grass
beneath the window
confused by their own reflection.

The Butler Model of Tourism

I come back year after year
cracked black valise, busted zipper
spring-shot lobby divans drained of color,

to press crisp bills into Monte’s hand
come up for air from the tortoise shell
of his thread bare uniform, ease myself

down on a sagging mattress
wait for the clatter of ancient bones
his creaking cart and shuffling feet

to recede into absolute silence down
the dimly lit hall, broken only by a spate
of conversation between the couple

I can just make out in the water
stained fresco above the bed
two of them lost in a heated row

as if I couldn’t hear their bald appraisals
shockingly frank in this flocked walled room
with musty corners and milky windows

disagreeing only on the degree of my
progression through the dismal stages of
“The Butler Model of Tourism”

him making a half-hearted case for
Rejuvenation, the woman straddling
the thin line between Stagnation and Decline.