She may walk through crowds
unseen
An advantage of her age
poking through products  
at her own distracted speed
Feeling fruit or sniffing soap
Reading labels
fine print through two pair of glasses
turning slightly
hoping no one sees...
how gone it's getting....

She may lean on cart at check-out
just shy of your usual...
Old
who ask for double bags
Nope, she will not slow the line that way
Remembering work
assesses pain
shifting weight to other leg
to spare an aching knee

Not one for counting desperate change
Not arguing every item on receipt
Not fumbling coupons
nor writing checks

...will not slow the line...

reluctant to let go of youth
Remembering exhaustion's day
she will not slow the line that way--
Fiddles with smart phone
(Yes, she knows how!)
to pass the time
She fumbles through her purse--
God only knows
what “old folks” look for
Probably glasses, tissues, gum,
or
"Where the hell's my keys!"

Stopping by a news rack
on the way out
Is she waiting for a cab?
Who cares!
Outta way, she stops to read
The New York Times, WaPo, Journal
Thee chapters of a novel
Outside their pay-walls
The mind beneath the woolen cap
is at it
grazing once again, for free
Where she often likes to feed--
her curiosity
No one sees her watching
from the inside out
and the corner of her eye

But what to do about that cat litter?
or ½ and ½
on highest shelves?
she simply cannot reach....

Always some tall good-lookin' guy around
to flatter
his size
looking for dog kibble, “big game snacks” or beer

She plays
the old lady card so well
...and somehow
gets what she needs

Off the weir where the water runs fast and the danger is near to the surface,
watching as fish out of water choke for a chance to get further upstream and
I envied their trials

sometimes I swim to the island and lay looking up at the blue sky, being warmed by the June sun until dry
and at other times I drift out to sea.

'jump off the aqueduct and you're ******'
that's what they told me, but I jumped off it
anyway.

Salmon we lads poached to cook over the coals
and all of them goals that we set
which was like walking on water and not
getting wet,
but we thought we were Jesus
back then.

i love you with
all of my darkness
and all of my light
like a midnight flower
blossoming,

hinged like a door
i battle to reach you

i know only of our love,
i'm a blue mood and
a strange sea, weeping
in winter's silver frost,

your fiery legs
leave me longing
like a jealous cloud
longs to dream of
the night and hold
it as its own,

i'm crazy about your
legs, crazy, crazy,
crazy about your love,

and i melt as you kiss me
crazy jealous of your love.

15 tapes over 15 years, moments and
occasions, vacations and holidays,
one per year in 60 minutes or less.

I took them to a little shop downtown
and got them back as DVD’s,
then I gave them to you at Christmas.

I kept copies for myself
but I have yet to watch them
for fear of forgetting the reasons
it all went to hell.

You told me that you often get confused
between what's real and what's on TV
and about whether the events you remember

are actually being remembered,
or are they just being recalled from
watching the DVDs?

Maybe that’s why you
don’t remember the same
**** as me.

Maybe you believe that if it’s not in
those home movies then it must not be real,
and therefore never really happened.

What you are not realizing is that everything
in those home movies is a wanted memory.
There are no jagged edges and
no accidental recordings,

no scenes of betrayal,
no secret relations,
no sordid behavior,
obsessive compulsions,
no sick fascinations,
her ephebophilia*,
no lack of affection,
no painful rejection,
no moral transgressions,
no threats of her leaving,
no demon possession.

instead

what you see in those movies is just
a compilation of best behavior.

The absolute truth is that you live with an
evil so dark that you question your sanity,
as I did for so many years.

The juxtaposition of  
her sensational gas-lighting^ with
the pleasantness of your DVD
dominated memory has caught you in
the vacuum of her black hole.

When you exist within the proximity of
such overbearing darkness you tend to
attempt to create your own light to live by,

but your light will never be bright enough
until you create space between it and
her vacuum that constantly snuffs it out..

Just know that I will always love you

and all I ask is that you take note of who it is
behind the camera lens of those memories,
and who it is that created them for you,

and maybe one day you'll understand all of this,

because I know that I don't.

without the sound of rain she is lazy. without the taste of *****, she's

awkward. without a tan, too pale; without a page to turn,

lonely. without a song to hear she is calm. with no party, she is her

own. without a shower, she's disgusting. without blindness, she's

cute in those glasses. without food she looks like she should eat,

and with no lover,

she is sort of lost. without a smile, she seems depressed. without

kissing she is ***** and with no bra she is a ****. without laughter

she is bored. without the ability to remember, she is thankful, as well

as naive. without the ocean she is suffocated, with no future she is

trapped. and without hope, she is most hopeful; without herself, she

is a shell.

from the series, Winter Birds*

Unseen shivers of song
Junco’s busy gray visit
Amid the sudden flash of white
Arctic scissor-wedge of tail
in hoods of
Charcoal-heated nervous fleet
wheels round the eaves
on unnerving cold
to land on secret signal

Twits on crystal