We know
the old adage:
he who plans, He who laughs.
Pray the laugh's not too bitter and
mocking.

It was one of those fussy, fuzzy little epiphanies;
She’d noticed, a little surprised and nonplussed,
That her wedding ring sat on the window sill above the sink,
Its removal necessitated to scrub the assemblage
Of dishes and silverware facing her,
The act certainly of no particular significance in itself
Simple unconscious mechanics,
Like tying a shoe or a quick goodnight peck,
But a thing at one time unthinkable,
Akin to betrayal and other sorts of unimaginable treachery,
Involving the breaking of solemn covenants
Of undying affection and fealty
(Though such vows rendered impotent
By their very nature, their utter lack of recognition
Of life’s winds and wuthering)
When love was a thing close kin to sheer madness,
Hurtling onward without heed to caution or stoplight
(But such emotion also prone to falsehood,
A three-alarm call with mutual aid to boot,
All for some overwrought trash barrel or barbecue)
And she was stirred from such reverie
By his appearance in the kitchen with a late arrival of glassware
Proffered with a bit of a wan smile,
Which she accepted as sufficient apology,
Taking a moment to push the ring a bit more toward safety,
Away from the minor maelstrom of water
Rushing unheedingly into the drain.

These trips by the county boys,
Being further deputized as burly, armed elves
Tended toward the grim,
Taking them on roads way up in the hills
Where pavement was the stuff of fantasy
And the home-sweet-homes
Were ancient pock-mark and rusted single-wides
Or jerry-built additions uneasily affixed
To some abandoned hunting camp or outbuilding,
Third-hand rugs or tarps covering
Hard ground, possibly augmented with a sprinkle of sawdust,
And you learned not to do more than exchange hellos
With the parents (this just one more minor indignity,
One more for-today-only handout,
The toxic mixture of resentment and self-recrimination
Never far from the surface) and head for the kids
As quickly as politeness allowed, the smiles
(Sometimes positively beatific, others suitably wan,
Knowing that tomorrow would be another day
In a series of just another days)
And upon leaving one such place, a couple of the boys
Heard an incongruous tinkling, this place
Far enough from town and insulated by bluff and pine woods
Where it couldn't be from St, Mary's or Faith Baptist,
And turning the corner toward where they were parked,
They happened upon a black bear,
Improbably wakened and wandered from some nearby cave,
Toying with some improvised wind chime,
Comprised of old graters, 50s-issue percolator stems,
Silverware liberated from some Denny's or school cafeteria,
And as they backed away to seek
Some alternate path to their vehicle, the younger of the pair opined
Must be some angel getting his wings, hey?
To which his partner, who knew these hills
And their sundry denizens all too well replied
You get that bears attention,
You're mebbe gonna find yourself on the waiting list.

As architecture, as artifice
It was an impressive entity, indeed
Rising several stories in height,
The winds at its top leading it to flutter
In such a manner as there was considerable debate
As to the identity of the visage at the apex,
Though there was no doubt that the edifice
Was majestic as it stood implacably *****,
Its folds billowing in an inscrutable silence,
And if one were to inquire as to its origins
Or the nature of the scaffolding it rested upon,
Such questioning was curtly dismissed
As irrelevancy of an unworthy and secular nature.

Such raiments would be the province
Of those gated and corniced places
Up on the hillside, and even that milieu
Living on residue and recollection,
The glories of the past
Fading like so many past-peak October leaves,
Beautiful in the sense of such colors
They heretofore possessed,
Though in any case, the whys and wherefores
And relative merits of thens and nows
Secondary to more prosaic matters:
The price per gallon at the Gulf station down on Route 17,
Seasonal temps at Bear Mountain
Trying line up some other gig or side-hustle
Once the land locks and the leaf-peepers and hikers go home,
Those hoping corroded propane tanks and curled shingles
Can make it just one more winter,
And if the worried and wondering
Enjoyed the luxury of philosophic musing,
They might ponder upon what those earlier residents
Who had lived at the apex of Manhattan society
(And possibly even those earlier residents,
Jumbles of Patroon and Lenape blood
Who crouched forlornly in the Palisades
As that skyline came into being)
Would think of what became of this place,
Yet as they look up there are no ghosts of the ancients,
But merely the impassive, lazily circling turkey vultures,
Implacable, enduring, constant.

They’d had him dead to rights for poisoning the well,
Least wise as far as they reckoned,
His fingerprints all over the pail
(Not the only set, but there in a goodly number nonetheless)
And footprints more-or-less conforming
To his boots in size and tread
And perhaps all that wasn’t stitched up as tight
As the sheriff’s boys would have liked it,
But there were other factors,
Things inferred and whispered
It being a place and time where truth
Was a sufficiently malleable thing
(There was also the testimony of one woman,
A lover, perhaps, or at least in her own visions,
Whose sworn statement was punctuated
With wild gesticulations and shrieking denunciations
As to how the accused had shredded all vows holy and otherwise,
The whole thing close enough to madness
That it was surreptitiously removed from the record)
And the trial was a brief, perfunctory affair
The defense attorney literally in shock
From the cavalier manner by his objections were waved away,
His motions for mistrial and subsequent appeal
Disappearing into some void of bored court clerks and paralegals,
The upshot of which was one man
Fitted with an unappealing cravat
Paraded before a sufficient gathering of onlookers
(But a quieter affair than such things normally were,
The harsh cacophony of the cicadas,
String section tuning for some discordant symphony,
Rising above the hum of the attendant mass)
And as the proceedings rambled onward
Towards its unwelcome conclusion,
The guest of honor grimly mused
As to how restoring of the water table and its potability
Would do little to put things to right.

You learn, and generally to your discontent
That wishes and horses have much in common
Each likely to prove less than obliging
To take to the bit and bridle
No matter how fine the metal and leather may appear
And should the procurer demur,
He may find there are provisos and caveats
Governing that which can’t be recanted
Returns and refunds being frowned upon
As such items, being one of a kind,
Custom accoutrements which only one can don
And regrettably one is apt to find
That you may not have found a perfect fit
And once it breaks, you’ll find you bought it.