The morning snow falling
silently. The children

are absorbed in their play.
The house is murmuring

and sighing. The dad with
the noisy mind lives in

his own world.

Under the harvest
moon, the farmer
mourns his dead
wife. In his black
suit, sitting on
the white rock,
he looks like
a question mark.

It’s late October.
She is renovating
the newly
bought, old house.

The kids are
making costumes:
he’s a ghost,
she’s Cinderella.

The apple tree,
recently dressed
in red and green, is
now nearly naked.

How to describe
awareness: deploy

an adjective and  
a noun that say

nothing, then depict
a keen eyed hunting

dog, then an immense
space, then draw a cat,

slowly on the
prowl, and label it

a verb, then a
sentence about the

vast beauty of the sea
that is left incomplete

because it is so

A ***** martini
in the shape of
a Christmas tree,
a Christmas tree
in the shape of
a cup of coffee,
a cup of coffee
in the shape of
a gun, a gun
in the shape of
a man, a man
in the shape of
a ***** martini.

A newborn
in the shape of
an old man,
an old man
in the shape of
an electro-
magnetic coil,
an electro-
magnetic coil
in the shape of
an empty kayak,
an empty kayak,
in the shape of
a newborn.

Maybe I’m a fraud,
maybe I’m not the
guy who empties the
trash bins, maybe I’m
a theoretical
physicist failing
to piece together
a story of
everything, maybe
my wife is really
dead and I am in
love with a memory,
or maybe I’m the
guy who has a gun
loaded with blanks
ready to fire at
anything that moves.