This September katydid has found home on shelves in our dining room.

His roommates are books,
a rock stolen from the drystone walls of Yorkshire
fossil fish,
and whatever the trilobites left
    when their passing seemed almost as negligible as their presence.  
Someone should tell him,
as he chirps his nights away
calling,
begging,
wanting.
Love can’t be found among heady books and artifacts
hard and enveloped
Stonily paralyzed by time

Wings may strike against eachother,
legs rub till they’re raw with heat
And that’s not what we call for either
It’s always the afterward
All of our singing in the night is for naught
When we are inevitably left
Alone and transformed into some relic of the past,
or some words someone may have spoken
then thought memorable enough to pen

A memory of melody
As a turning bird song travelling on air
spring to summer to fall
Even the birds stop their call
   only the cricket is left

All of us lying down
singing until our hearts are no longer our hearts.  

The song changes
The desire always remains the same.

Take me dancing
Door to door in the cold
Our footprints nothing more than
Temporary impressions in the snow
Melting with the morning light-
Take me dancing
Dancing
Door to door in the cold
Until my heart goes stone from old
And I have finally given up
all that I know.

She hung like a jewel on so slender a thread
Off of the long, white neck of the moon
She swooned,  such  predictability-
yet ever out of reach
Tonight she remembered days
All that near brushing of such an illumination
Each complementing the other
A dance of days and time
Round and full
Lean and dark
On and on and on.

He picked and hammered deep in my heart
While he pecked and ripped away the bark
and then his song
so fickle and fair
Punctuating the moonlight
and thick stagnant air
Relentlessly piercing the dark
Rubbing the sticky mistletoe
deep in the once strong tree
repeating each melody again
and again
one,
two,
three
Banishing sleep from my eyes
The peace from my chest
And for now as long as I live,
live
live
I fear that I will never know
That child sweet slumber of summer nights,
seeming to me so gentle hearted
pure and sweet
such long
long lost and easy rest.

He would file the edges of glasses down
Whenever one would chip
And I would find them,
Rough rimmed
Ragged edges ground
And always where my lips would rest.

I don’t know why it annoyed me so.
Perhaps because I hated the imperfection so badly
But the dishes too, he began to glue those
When broken and that was too much.

Cup handles superglued and breaking just
As I lifted the hot liquid for a sip
Lead crystal port decanters with the
Elegant stoppers mended
And sitting cockeyed on top
Daring me to lift it and then
Only to break over and over
And him,
trying to fix it
again and again and again.

I found myself deliberately smashing things
Down when chipped, or flawed
Throwing them on anything hard.
The backyard patio became my favorite
Breaking point.
I couldn’t stop.
although I cut my feet and knees
While creeping through the yard
barefoot
Weeping.

I hid the adhesive.  

Just so he couldn’t try to mend things one
More
time.

I severed the cord on the grinding wheel
And found myself examining anything
fragile with a keen eye=
Sometimes a magnifying glass.
Searching for any imperfection that might prove
A flaw capable of breaking.

And in the end
it seemed to me

That nothing,
nothing could leave this house
Until finally,
eternally,
unfix ably broken
or crushed into pieces.

This evening I thought the woods were on fire.
It seemed a visitation of sorts.
I believed it to be angels burning incense-
Saints kissing the leaves-
Fairies and sprites celebrating the summer passing
and for one moment the sun peaked into the dark undergrowth-
laying a swath of burning red.
Gifting us with a piece of itself.

This sun that ancients worshipped-
Generations sacrificed  and feared-
chanted, praised, loved and bowed down
deep in reverence
now lay across a blaze of color
on the bush underneath the trees.

And for a moment I could not breathe
overtaken by the thought of only this sun

merely the sun
leaning in-
loving the earth.

She yowls again from a distant room.
Her cry taking on different sounds
Depending the time of day

Sometime scolding then mournful
She is at once incessantly loud
Then alarmingly quiet in her own way

It used to annoy me
This constant complaint
aging cat angst and regret

Who for years was seductive and sleek
Now stubbornly hangs and howls all day
Crouched on basement stairs protesting


the bleak prospect of advanced being
just a pain in the *** pet.

He taps the insides of the cup
As he stirs his coffee with a cheap spoon -
Sugar, sugar-
Then throws it down with a clank
On the metal table.
I am afraid that he will tell me this despair is because
Our world has ended
suns are exploding and the moon
has abandoned the earth leaving us all
wandering in  eternal darkness.

Tears slide down the well
worn
deep creases
that began to define his features
when he was only three.

There is a path of least resistance somewhere that we’ve never known.
He shakes his head in disgust.
Clicks his tongue over and over.
Our silence is binding-
Absolute.

Because what can one say about all those years
No good fortune, no talisman
Only sorrow and bad bad luck.
I won’t disturb this sad silence.
Everything I’ve  ever wanted to know is there
In that occasional shake of the head,
That involuntary click of the tongue
That echoes with the insistence of memory.
I tap the insides of my cup with my spoon
And fling it on the table.
He covers his face with his hands.
And as I watch the
sun falls –
the moon weeps-
His face enters my dreams and I am told,
I click my tongue in my sleep.

The persimmons hung gorgeously orange
And red off bare limbs
Nature’s ornaments in December-
They dropped, divine and ripe
Juicy one by one
On to the soft leaf litter
Out of loving arms and all naked
grey skies.
This was my daily treat
Landscapes of color and
That tree at the creek corner road
Stunning in fog
As I obeyed the stop sign at least once
Or twice every day
In the darkest time-brightest joy
Illuminating the fumy and spirituous,
wet northern
California days..

If I might bite that luscious fruit
Stolen from someones tree
Rest in the cool bay rain
Slumber me
Rock me In that sweet,
Fresh petricor that bewitches
Your mind before it washes your ripe skin.

I was the wild mustard then.
Everywhere at once in winter
Corrupting ****** soaking earth
Thunderous yellow

Rising for an all too brief season
Mistaking you for the sun