So we are where we were at the beginning
     you and i, amid the waste of so many years
         and lives spent living amongst one another

I put away your things in the places I have
     learned that you expect to find them and also
          I know the places where you like to put away my things

I know that we must not try to eat breakfast together
     you must have the newspaper fresh, even if I put it back
          so that I have learned to get my news from public radio

You have learned to like my cooking, even when I cannot
     seem to remember that you do not like pears, except in salad
          and I have started to use ketchup on my turkey at Thanksgiving

Now that we have achieved this balance, we find ourselves alone
     again, with no children to referee our lives and focus our attention
         so we are where we were at the beginning, and I wonder, how long

Can we learn to fall in love with the people we have become, you and I?

impulse boys
shooting themselves out of skateboards
into the hearts of lovely girls
sitting on the picnic tables
pretending not to be seen

lonely girls
what more is there to say
about these lonely girls, willing
their way through to picnic tables
pretending not to look

i.
standing almost five feet tall
she must have been eighty five
but there she was, great-grandmother
standing on the trunk of an
ancient pine tree that had blown
across the driveway at Sand Creek

ii.
we used a two-man saw
must have been six feet long
with a handle at each end
the handles made of wood
one hand above and the other
below the blade, which cut on
both the push and the pull

iii.
in the garage, below the
house, the wall held a
wicked looking scythe,
just like the one which
death carries, with a long,
sharp blade, which we
used to mow the fields
around the cabin, to keep
the woods away, as a
     fire break

iv.
my cousin showed up,
riding on a horse, with
a dangerous looking local boy
who had scar across his cheek
white against his tan face
when her horse tried to
lie down and rest, the local
boy jumped off his mount
and started kicking, viciously,
her horse in the ribs

v.
once, we walked right in
front of two long snakes,
making there way between
the porch and the car, i jumped
and ran back up to the porch,
and would not leave that day
grandmother said those
snakes had no business
being this far north
     i agreed

i.
the lake has opened
several places where the ice
has come unfrozen
two idiots drove their
pickup into a hole
last night

ii.
the emergency vehicles
woke me with sirens
racing to drag these
drunks off the
ice before they froze

iii.
the beach sand has been
    uncovered
by the blowing wind
which has driven the snow
into a drift over the dock which we
have stored by the
     treeline

iv.
walking the sandy shore
i stooped to pick up
a piece of green, bottle
     glass

v.
the glass is weighty in my hand, and rounded
     smooth
its edges shaped and polished
by the working of sand, water and time
         like an olive,
         like a cherry,
         like a memory,
              of you

i.
your drunken goodbyes
hang so sweet in the air
filling the space with a
desperate needy embrace

ii.
i stand before you with
no defenses and nothing
i could possibly say except
what do i know about love

iii.
i walk you out into the
East Village night to
see about hailing a cab
sun peeking over the bridge

iv.
everything seems to be
coming apart i wonder
when i surrendered to you
what do i know about pain

v.
i wave goodbye to
the back of your head
and turn back to look
at the pink, foamy sunrise

and, as i stood there
on an unpeopled shore,
as the waves rolled in, one
following the other, i knew
with certainty, as in a
remembered dream,
that there was no returning
neither a going back nor
a turning away...

i felt the salt spray, cold on
my face,
and now i heard the sea birds
and looked,
to see them wheeling
above the water, now diving
and fighting one another
for the catch

and the beach, a grit of
seashell white, seemed as
the ocean itself, endless,
the evidence of great age
all about me in the sand
quartz ground from the
action of the water upon the
mountains
eroding even these
wearing down everything
in time
am i the sand, always washing away, or
the waves, eternally crashing against
the shore

what was it i was saying?
oh yes, i remember...

then, i walked back to the car

all day long, their banging disturbed me at my work
startling me from my reverie, lost deep in the world
of I Wish I Had A Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman

the birds, returned early from wherever it is they hide
during the long winter, have come to fling themselves
against the over-sized picture window in my living room,

songbird pitch themselves into my poet's dull daytime
so that i am moved to rise from my desk, to look out,
to seek a bird flying away, or peer down to search for the

tiny body maybe roosting among the stalks of the overgrown
hydrangea, which captured  autumn’s maple leaves, worn
like a Chicago matron's mink to keep the winter chill at bay

and, as the spring surrenders to the warmer days, i mow the
brightly greened grass, innocently cutting row after row,
to turn finally to the narrow strip nearest the picture window,

a mixture of grass, dried leaves and tiny twigs, all mulched
by the power mower, where i discover these dessicated bodies  
exhumed from shallow graves at the base of the newly leafed

hydrangea, their stiff, dry feathers bristly, colored a washed
out grey, tiny feet tightly balled, with all the soft parts missing
and the beaks a startling white, as though bleached, bright against

the dullness of the little corpses which seem to have sunk into
the mosses of the yard, so that they lay preserved below the blade
for the first late-spring chore -- mowing the bird bone garden

i sleep with the bedroom window ajar despite the overnight chill
and dream of the memory of birds, their shapes, their white beaks
and, still, the bird songs wake me in the cool green spring morning