483

My sister's daughter married
the young man with the cane
who she's been bringing around to the barbeques
since I was still living in Santa Fe
where I walked each night around the lake
talking to Martin who used to fly jets
and then worked in a flower shop

482

All the extra minutes on the days
are catching up to me.
I want to run
but I hold my sweat,
I can't bathe for three more days.

And I wish I didn't know
it'd be okay if you caught me.
You wouldn't even tie me up in a net,
toss me in a trunk,
or even tell me that you knew
I didn't really want to get away.

481

Mornings are so peaceful
when there's nothing to do
and they get inside my room

I'm under my roof like I'd be under a tree
and the walls must be a wooden fence
because there's the sun lying on my books
and my rug

and through the holes in the window screen
there's nothing between the wind
and the birds and the bed
where I'm lying down breathing

480

Wake up early to be with me in the morning,
I won't be back home all day.

Look at me loosening my tie
from behind your pink pajamas
with your big eyes
and folded legs

I see you sitting up in bed,
I'm too tired to stay up late.

479

Every time she becomes happy,
I tell her the city hurts my eyes
and she looks at the container she just closed
extra long before putting it back in her cabinet.

Instead I drive to where the houses
are built between the trees
but just as the lights from the city fade
the stars replace them, never letting me
be alone, outside in the dark.

478

You ask me what I do in the morning
and forgive me for not wanting to say.

It's not that my floor is covered in trash
that I walk through to get to the kitchen
and heat up a month old chicken for breakfast.

I'm afraid of how I'll feel
knowing you're watching me wake up tomorrow.

477

Just like I don't need to see
myself to understand my pose,
you always catch me staring at the ceiling
before you even reach the bottom floor
of your office building
where I wait and all I learn about you
when you come out of the elevator
is what you decided to wear today.

476

It can't be heavenly to know all our beginnings.
As if understanding how a tree grows
would turn my arms to branches, my legs to a trunk.

Or knowing what it is I breathe
would let me liven someone's lungs.

Heaven just gets further away,
we couldn't always see the sky.

475

Why should you get to use my name?
I may still live here when I'm old
but not because I have someplace to be,
here, every morning,
a parking spot, a person we both have to listen to
from opposite sides of the building.

You heard that I said something to
someone you see in the afternoon.
Well I'll go home to lay down with
someone who can tell how happy I am
every when my shirt is untucked
and I bury my pale face under the covers.

474

A bird sat on my roof
watching a plane go by

A slight twist of the head
for every few miles

Then it swooped into a tree
like it had just woken from a good dream

473

I made tea in the morning
and drank it in bed
watching trees change colors out the window
as the sky opened

Then you banged on my door,
your car holding down my driveway.
You'd driven all the way from Michigan
cracking your knuckles at traffic lights.
You were on your way when I boiled the water
and heard the invisible birds

472

You planned it all out really well, you thought.
You'll run out of money February when you're eighty-two.
Now you're seventy-nine and you feel alright and you need an excuse to want to die.

If you could ask for help,
all you would hear is how you never had a
wife or a kid.
That's made you sad at times,
but you're too used to knowing how it's going to feel
when you open your window on warm nights
to remember who else is in the house

471

Sometimes in the suburbs
a crater falls on the next neighborhood
and everyone stops talking about the government
and how glad they are they stopped going to church

No one knows what to do with it
because it doesn't seem dirty enough to clean
or clean enough to try and teach to live life more carefree

470

Don't talk to me in terms of inches.
I don't want to think in cups of water
or tree branches.

There's nothing important about your crooked mouth
or the little cracks in your voice.

On your way our you straightened the picture on my wall,
but once I painted the whole house green
and tomorrow I can sell it
to where the speak a different language,
drive to the first city.

469

Taking her house from her
with all her clothes and furniture
I've made myself so simple.

So easily the one with the bright pale face
when I walk by her in the street
wearing her old shoes
asking how she's been.

468

You get ready for work in the dark
just like your father did.

You wonder if your neighbors
are all afraid of you, too,

because outside's only light in the summer
and no one wants a part time friend
so you clip your bushes with a machine
too loud to hear the people pass.

467

You never had too much hair on your back,
never stood too tall and lanky, or too heavy in the waist.
Never too loud at a party with jokes too dull,
never the one in your college dorm who'd never had a kiss.

Nobody ever worried when you grew old alone
because you greeted all the men at the barber shop,
all the ladies at the market,
and the neighbors were always happy
to let you cook them dinner.

And even you didn't think it was right
to love a girl so young,
she was only just out of school,
only just realizing what she would do
and you didn't want to touch her, oh
your hand were so dry and tired
but she wasn't like a daughter, not a figure of a child,

and when you clutched your own wrists, she said
one day you'd both be dead.

466

Mot of the time it's as simple as
summer is when it's light enough
after dinner to take a walk
to the park where the kids
and the dogs all are

That's when I wish you were gone,
our from under the bridge at the lake
drilling tiny holes from underneath
and waiting for someone to step on them,
blocking the sun

465

I'd see a dark hole where the sun is
just a telescope lens reaching far past
where by then I've decided the dead people go

I could never understand
the children jumproping in the street
sweating in the heat
where the world is so dim

464

I want to see my face
in someone who's hands
I hardly recognize,

put her in my house
and see where she walks,
if she touches something I haven't touched in years,
goes for the drawer that's jammed shut,

understand the way she turns the pillow on the couch
so that the zipper can't be seen

463

I wish I could tell you how I sat in the clouds
how small you were from there

I couldn't even find your town
looking at you now with the sky behind your head

I don' think I'll ever see you again,
your face so weary,
your stance too tall to be so relaxed

462

You know coming would be bad for you
when the sour smell of moldy carpet
pressed on the backs of your eyes

Your mother's old bed
still dressed in sheets
browned and wet from the ceiling leaks

She climbed in through the window
and froze in the cold
never having to see you leave

461

Who will appreciate
your routine of tea in a paper cup
after rolling the old folks back to their rooms

from your thin blue pants
and walking sneakers, you know
you never planned to stay in one place so long

You just couldn't part with the view
from the room of the old man who always
wants to read to you