The grass is dripping with chiffon, that old garment that somehow becomes new with every evening's donning.

What a shock! To feel that wet fabric between my toes, noticing the squish and the scrape of the grass and the gradual acceptance as my body warms to match the chill underfoot.

I wonder about the suburban night,
how despite our best efforts we can't permanently pave over that expanse of dandelions (you would wield your power over each as you popped off their heads) that used to live in the field next door.

Envied by a world of mates, they separate and procreate without a second thought as to where their seed lands as long as the soil or sand can root down far enough to support its wispy yellow tufts.

The days are shorter now, and the nights in Cleveland once again hold that bitter edge that makes this town our own personal triumph, our defeat over the elements as they wax and wane in their consumptive impulse. You can actually feel the winter on the wind, for the love, after a year of cold and cold and rain and cold.

But the grass, that gauzy tangle that grabs you before you topple into the cliff of whatever whatever, complaints about the weather. It's that chilly, beautiful, selfless dew that you wrap yourself in, that wraps itself in you, that helps you slow your aching self, and for now you can leave the future on the shelf.

- Don't wish you life away, that's what my mom used to say -

How, at that age, can you possibly gauge
that your mom is a holy person, a shaman, a sage,
That she knows that aging turns into to dying
And that growing up is worth less than a whole field of dandelions?

Got pills, I’ll swallow them
Take the chills that follow them
I don’t want to wallow
I’ve got a heart that needs hollowing

The gobs I’ve been gobbling
Don’t help with the wobbling
The legs are still hobbling
But the heart’s no longer
throbbing,
This bottling,
needs a full on throttling.

So the maudlin
Is phoned in
But the tones are all
honed in this turkey with the bone in.

The drumming keeps droning.

This strumming keeps zoning.

And this mouth keeps on foaming.

You're so floppy.
Like a puppy,
all arms and feet
gangly, knobby.

We sit together
to work on work
but nothing gets done
it's all just talk,

Just stories about grandpas
from World War II
Freedom of love
Religious views.

And through it all
in your attentive eyes
I can see your heart
And can see how wise
You are for sixteen
And I'm twenty-nine
so that makes thirteen
years between us, christ.

I hope I see you down the line
Ten years, or twenty
And you're still just...fine
I fear for you in this terrible place
It's unkind to a gentle mind
It can shut down an open space.

But it feels like nothing
Could create a person
Not years or experience
With such clarity of vision
And depth of innocence
As you showed me today
Under the tent where we spent the day.

I believe in you.
And in who you'll become
You've already got the glue
Now you just need some
Confidence, but it's ok to be green
When the world is bright
And you're barely sixteen.

Man Naturally loves delay,
And to procrastinate;
Business put off from day to day
Is always done to late.

Let ever hour be in its place
Firm fixed, nor loosely shift,
And well enjoy the vacant space,
As though a birthday gift.

And when the hour arrives, be there,
Where'er that "there" may be;
Uncleanly hands or ruffled hair
Let no one ever see.

If dinner at "half-past" be placed,
At "half-past" then be dressed.
If at a "quarter-past" make haste
To be down with the rest

Better to be before you time,
Than e're to be behind;
To open the door while strikes the chime,
That shows a punctual mind.

Moral:

Let punctuality and care
Seize every flitting hour,
So shalt thou cull a floweret fair,
E'en from a fading flower

The drunk at the bar found Aristotle at the bottom of his bottle.

But there's an important phone call coming from his shoe so he quits the pop stand, shoe in hand, and runs outside to take the call but it's only God saying nevermind, I can tell you're busy and it wasn't important anyway.

A pack of wild dogs are following me home so I invite them in and give them gin but they snarl and quarrel till I've had enough and I huff and puff till they take the hint and go down to the corner store, and I lock the door because loose dogs on ***** is the best way to lose your rent.

It's all peace and quiet at 6am, the rain is falling with malintent but the world is sleeping and I am keeping these hours from leaking out into the homes of the children next door where they slumber without worry so I hurry to maintain their dreams of fairies and flying while my kind is dying in the glowing dawning of the day.

But Aristotle sleeps alone in his bottle at the bottom of the bin, and the dogs have their gin and the kids dream within their great happy innocence as I spin another sunrise from the maw of the sky and then die until tomorrow when I'll do it again.

Reaching up but I don't know why.

It all was dark but now there's sky!

Tangled together with tendrils like fingers
Alive, I'm alive
And my body is new.

Where there once was a seed,
Now there's a view.

Do I even have eyes?
Can I see?
Is there someone taking care of me?

My purpose is clear and I climb
and when I do
The sugar courses through me and helps me burst through with leaves and seeds and pods of green.

Will it hurt when I harvest?
I have no voice to scream.

Just a need and a drive to create,
to be alive,
To drink water and sunlight
And to remain always green.

If goblins are coming, they'll expect something.
Goblin tea.
I don't have the recipe.

Butts and stubs and the shrubs out front
but who knows what they'll want for lunch

It might be me
I don't have the recipe.

It's floating and falling at once. There's no footing, but still a softness that eases the passing hours. If tomorrow is a problem, it's tomorrow's problem as I sink into a perfect nowness that extends beyond the reach of time.

It's dark out here under the cloudy half moon. We sit comfortably in silence serenaded by the popping drops of leftover rainwater careening to their next place of rest. They'll surely be gobbled up by the cracks or the ******* air or the perfect flow of water right down the drain and out to the rivers and the lakes of the many.

Alone with the smokey dark, so unlike the music of the forest songs in the old home that now belongs to some other child who might be wondering at my initials in the long dried concrete. What ever became of the small strange hands that cast their delicacy immortal on that casual day one summer, one year, so far away from the tiny reach of these brand new fingers?

Don't stand on the big fan, child, or try to fly by lifting your long skirt just enough to feel the hot billows underneath. Wait (oh the waiting!) for the hand of god to fill your body with balloons, and only then will you rise straight up and up and up till the farthest star is a blaring blot behind you on the white black sky.

Sit  there with the moon then and ask your secret questions. The answers in your swollen heart will sing like the cicadas clinging the trees and the jungle air will float you home on a cloud in the breeze.