a new morning huddled
over the small stove set on snow
cold-numbed fingers
fumbled with matches
to light it

coughs punched at a dust rag sky,
the dull rasps
embarrassed near neighbors might hear
how the weak
body heaves, wracks
they'd smell kerosene on hands and clothes
if they came too close

the bent over figure
counts ashes afloat, relics
of fresh disasters wrought high,
loosing tally at one in hope it was the last;
restarts the reckoning -
it might be a tempest this time

fire fed by collections of poems,
old histories of things with no purpose,
expired quickly in overnight darkness
cold, gray their corpses still lay
beyond brushed bricks of the hearth

even a grocery list,
its page neatly erased under flakes,
chases after vapors escaped an empty fuel can,
hunger replaced by craving to be warm again

inside, behind the door
they bow heads and say grace at the table
praying over slices of light from a window
intoning with cotton puff voices
still
God gives tomorrow to continue the counting

As a kid, my best days had a trip to the park
in summer,
when Mother had time after work
and it didn't get dark so fast

we rode bikes on the paths between broken glass,
watched for stray dogs
(and avoided the grass)
once we saw two men strolling, holding hands
and Mother said not to stare,
"They must  be  Europeans - they do things like that"

her best friend was Mrs. Cohen-Around-The-Corner
they could cluck across our rough fence out back
or toss apples to one another
were there an apple tree nearby
(but there wasn't)
so they used the telephone instead

the woman, she once told me,
"would just die"
if her only son ever brought home

"a shiksa"

I laughed at the word,
because it sounded sounded funny and ethnic
(Mrs. Cohen taught English)

she let her boy back-talk,
even express profanity
in graffiti on a bedroom door
with black permanent marker
(it could always be repainted later, she explained)

mine met reason with
quick backhands or glowering looks;
once even washed my mouth out
with soap
so I nodded in agreement

I revisited the old neighborhood,
to the teacher long retired;
showed wallet photos
and discussed our health
(hers mostly),
hearing accounts of the son away
years at kibbutz,
too busy to call regularly
or make any grandchildren yet

I didn't mention the trip to the park
which was neater than I remember
the kids played tag
(on the grass!)
until a skinned knee needed a kiss;
where I'm certain I'd seen him, now balding,
the kid from around the corner,
holding hands with a European

Communion of Soft Fingertips

speak, modern world
we are sketched in languages of digital bits,
parity shading certainty with probabilities of truth
giving us form and existence across distance,
distilled to series of warm, invisible numbers

frequencies divided step-wise, as Fourier found them
in noise amalgamated as information heterodyned,
left to be separated out, reordered
by advanced statistical protocols
that trace our borders with delicate, unseen fingertips
 
a description of new beings, relationships between them
uncertain at first in the short trails
of data they create

but there eventually - by the law of large numbers
or acts of successive approximation

we'll find them

revealed, like a pointilist painting
or seemingly random collection of string
whose elements are alone meaningless
unless we step back to see an entirety of mass
which we recognize immediately
as true love and intimacy

autumn had been only imagined
lurking in small cracks between days,
paving heaved from fat roots underneath;
its arrival seemed improbable
in summer's heat

vernal green leaves grew only deeper
in generous sun,
promising some future harvest of fruit
far off distant, but sweet,
certainly, when it would come

cool, now, faded mornings break;
the pursuing season
sheds desires wizened,
of pages yellow-brown and finger-worn,
already memorized
as if being is cast aside in a child’s game
of loves me or loves me not,
youth’s clothing otherwise unneeded

they were, maybe, sins of greed
befallen all new living things
seeking moments owed but soon forgotten;
the scent of pink spring blossoms,
or how the peaches blushed in bunches
before we ate lustily from supple branches

how soon this winter comes
a tree’s hard woody bark will bare to needs,
extend dark arms, spindly, old
to splay against a field of gray
declaring stark existence to a callous sky
that stings with wind and cold

as if by artist’s craft, that sky,
a painted bride blushing
her blaze of blistering crimson
like a blossom opened to
a blue black ocean’s kiss
colors bled in slender fingers
caressing wind-blown waters
and united, they melted into starlight

I’m lying on a beach, sun-punched subconscious
not too hot as a briny breeze still blows ashore,
but warm and melted onto the ground
like candle wax spilled over

nearby recumbent girls, unmoving as statues,
**** Aphrodites raised of sand and sea foam
splay across loose opened chitons
unfurling scents of oils and lotions,
awaiting their animation from kisses of salt mist
or ocean tide come in too close

they’d vanish by next glance
lost in minutes or hours passed
the impressions they’d left filled with glistening sparkles,
constellations of miniature stars fusing
then extinguishing by pairs to gray flatness

ascendant on gulls' laughter, wind-stretched,
entangled among broken waves
in an endless silk scarf god once made
but left behind in his dream at dawn
when light then carved each grain its shape -
this beach for me to sleep on

life lost new words
like old eyes bereft of light
and work of thought
comes at painful price
a man's mind dreams old air, faces stars
and remembers real flesh, lips, love;
the lightness of falling leaves

and knows their memories
of a watery day in spring,
when past beauty used red steel
to hide a child shared with rain,
his face unseen, body gray
under waves kept closed to wonder

sky, loose at the fine ends
of dark death’s skin
has seen years, the trees
now sleeping peacefully
relieved of the burden they’d borne
embracing the coursing winter winds
where a son might live as breath-thoughts,
the little cloud of wild hope passing
giving purpose to the heavens