Each year
like Sisyphus
I roll a stone
up a hill.   

Turn in your syllabus.
Remember your paper.  
Sharpen your pencil.
Stop hitting your friend.    

Support your thesis.
Cite your sources.
Put your name on your paper,
and put down your phone.  

Each year
like Atlas
I hold up
the world.  

Go get some breakfast.
Where is your jacket?
Yes, I have cough drops.
Let’s call your mom.              

Your child is failing.
Your child is crying.
Your child is hurting.
Please pick up the phone.  

Each year
like Prometheus
I give
of myself.  

Please study your notes,
I care that you’re failing.
Please sleep tonight,
I care that you’re tired.  

Please eat something healthy,
I care that you’re hungry.
Please tell me what’s wrong,
I care that you hurt.    

i.

I lend myself to
form,  measure myself, careful
with how I say what

ii.

I manufacture
myself into bites, easier
to chew in passing

iii.

With limited words
I leave out all the hard parts 
no one likes to see

In time alone,
I have learned that iced coffee
always makes my stomach hurt.
Naps make time move
in just the right way, and I should
go somewhere and sit.  Outside.
Inside.  Somehwere that is not
my apartment. I learn (from Google)
that Tina Fey is a mother. I always
pictured her funny and alone. I write
down my thoughts in order, trying
to learn how one of them leads to the
other or if there is any connection at all.
They make a special tea for stress relief,
and I try it.  I take a bath and leave the door open
so my dog can reach me if anything goes wrong.
I am aware of every part of myself and
can’t help but to laugh, to think this
is who I was running from all along.

you pay no mind to
mother nature and drop your
leaves all summer long 

(written this morning, after traipsing through crunchy sycamore leaves…… a bit of an autumn teaser, I thought!🍁)

Thugs and thieves
The President called them thugs and thieves

I’m a poet – I know some thugs and thieves
This is what they do
Dough
Blow
Ho
Mo’

They repeat this until they get arrested, serve their time, get released

And start again

Dough
Blow 
Ho
Mo’

But they never explo’

Deep evergreens loom
Busy birds and lowing cows
Not a cloud in sight
Fresh mown grass warm beneath feet 
Crisp lemonade tart on lips

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn
and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.
                                                 (Wendell Berry)

Out of step on the march to the garden
I follow your tender prints into loam
to help you cut a bank of pussy
willow and use the trimmings (long
slender sprigs, easily bent) to shape
perfect arches above the climber beans

On days we go to plant or weed or hoe
we are Adam and Eve growing old
in our skins’ topography of furrows
and creases. See the robins on the wire,
spearmint behind the shed where the cat sleeps,
grapevines clambering over the trellis?

Our kisses are lean now, almost skinny;
soon, we know, what grows will grow on its own

Public Enemy

I apologize
if I crossed
a line

posting
a song, on
your wall.

I didn’t
realize
we weren’t

alone.

suddenly opens its eyes in the dark
locked in a vision–
a swarm of eyes
roses
sails through the air–
fragments of what is to come
moving at tremendous speed
quivering in the center of its music net  

for a few moments
you can see beauty hover
just out of reach
if you look quickly to the side  

shadows here are deep
the waiting room where we
wipe out memories  

I open the first door
full of silence
words begin to slide
my name comes to me like an angel
whispers into my being
I am not empty, I am open
up inside me–words       

          ~ Cento composed from Tomas Transtromer’s collection The Half-Finished Heaven

I don’t have to climb the highest mountain
I don’t have to swim the deep blue sea
I don’t have to tend the garden

It is more than this

I’m not leaving tomorrow
I’m not going anywhere next week
I know I’ll be here forever but

It is more than this

We’ve had some riot times
We’ve had some quiet times
These times they are the best of times but

It is more than this