Cleaning

   Kids play area at a laundry-mat in South O





I am cleaning

everything 

          except the corners
               stained dark 
               and sweet 

          of mangled time

like someone 

has died.





















































































.

Rest Area

Lying on the couch

awake since three

in the nursing home

with my dad

and all the other

saints of survival

I watch his skeletal 

frame disappearing 

into the pitch

dark bedroom.

Each shuffle step 

a psalm of frailty.

Eighty-nine year old

bones still moving.

Still holding him up 

in this weighted world.

On the drive home

I feel myself fading.

When I realize

that I can’t remember

the last few minutes

I pull off.

In the rest area

I sleep in the front seat

with the windows down.

The sun and wind flow in

along with the smell

of warm sweet grass.

When I wake 

I am lost in the world

for a wonderful moment.

I climb out of the car 

and slowly walk the perimeter

of the picnic area.

There are no people.

Just a lone semi

parked by the edge

of a corn field.

A driver named Winkle

may have been sleeping 

in its cab for fifty years.

I find a curved hiking path 

mowed into the waist high 

“restored prairie”.

It’s surrounded by wildflowers

and tall, brown grasses.

Fifty yards out

there is a sculpture.

A boat with no skin,

only broken ribs.

A plaque explains that it is

symbolic of the Viking explorers.

It has been surrounded 

with a fence so 

no one will touch it

or get too close.

I watch the fall bloom

asters

hyssop

golden rod and more

rocking back and forth

on the moist wind

coming up from the south.

Monarchs go tumbling by

diving again and again

into the wind

fighting their way

across North America

on paper wings.

Off in the distance

the windmill giants are

waving their arms at something

beyond the horizon.

The earth is tilting.

I think of my father.

No longer able to kneel and pray.

He lies on his back in bed

and prays for the world.

He sleeps and prays.

He has fought 

the wolves of loneliness.

He was wounded but now 

they lie quietly by his side.

He lies quietly by their side.

When I am with him

(and even when I am not) 

I feel his grace.

It gives welcome weight

to the ballast that’s needed

in this storm of days.

Back in the wild field

an old fence post holds

a twisted strand of wire.

It sings so softly with the wind

that it can hardly be heard.

It sounds like the ghost 

of a drowned woman 

calling from far 

beneath the water.

I am in love 

with these quiet things

that have nothing 

to do with survival.

I stand in the field 

listening to this sad music

and watch as a long 

spine of clouds

slowly bends itself

over the ancient world.

.

the waves

Each summer

paints another brush

stroke down

the giant’s back.

A canvas of dark gold 

with blood running

underneath.

The old day floats

its red hair in

the rising tide of night                     

takes a breath

and disappears

in the down below.

I drift away

from a dream of a life

in my dead Aunt Mitza’s 

96 rust Honda.

Failure and the stars

bloom in the black

iris of night.

Sweltering today

it was my turn

to sit in the car

on a side street

in the shade

because I did not want 

to go home to what

was once home

while missing home 

beyond reckoning

and without moving a hair

I was carried

on waves of sadness

out past the past

with its tinted colors

and the future

with its cool morning air

and into the open water

of the present.

          Once, deep in the wilderness, I lost my bearings. I knew where I was in the wilderness. I lost my bearings of identity. It's happened many times. It’s one of the reasons that I go there when I can. On this particular trip there was an afternoon after a day of paddling and portaging that I stripped off my salt stained clothes and carefully waded out over the sharp granite rocks that had been there for thousands of years until I could safely launch forward and glide out into the dark water so cold that it made me breathe quick dollops of air as if I was running or making love. I swam away from the tiny island. No people, no cabins, no boats, no electricity, no roads, no society. Just wilderness. Surrounded, cocooned, for days by wild forests and lakes. Moon, wolf, fish, bear, water, granite, pine, birch, sun, clouds, waves, wind, fire, flower, eagle, night, day. I turned over on my back and lie among the waves. The sun warming my face, chest, cock, and legs; the lake below making my skull, back, ass and legs shiver. The only sound was the wind and the tiny music of the waves lipping by. Over the heavy days of passage back into this wild place my identities had been slowly melting away and as they did I felt more and more of the wilderness until eventually there was so little of me left that a great quietness was able to grow in the space where all those other me(s) used to live.

Now I am soaked

in sadness and sweat

in the car

on the side street.

Now it is night

and I am driving away.

Now this prairie city

with its ten thousand roads

is a sacred ground

for the passage of our lives.

Now I am eating alone

while the sun disappears.

Now I am lying in bed

with fear by my side.

Now I am writing

this as a prayer

to the great 

quietness inside

which lets me see

everything more clearly. 

Now I am lifting my daughter

high into the air.

We are spinning

like the universe

as she laughs and laughs.

                                       

  

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