Leap Year

Every Thought...

Week 9: Leap Year

There is no easy transition from February to March: a few leftover poems, a sense of the mundane, nothing to hint at the moments ahead, even as a winter’s tale ends and the winds shift.


02/26:

To You

I wrote a poem
and left your name out
and there it hangs
a gilded frame
without a face
a pretty background
without a story.

I spent some time
thinking of rhythm
and balance
and measured out
its perfect place
upon my wall
and there it hangs.

You are the frame
you are the measure
and every time
I read my poem
I see your face
and let it hold me
a little longer

But you remain
an unspoken name
lost in a story
made of dreams
your lovely face
a figment of
a wishful song.


02/27:

She Folds My Clothes

           1

She folds my clothes,
the tailored rags
once piled in the dirt and
smell of days,
        which is to say
        she picks them up
        and separates them, cleans
        them, load by load,

these that I call
my own, not of
my soul, but nearly so:
my second skin,
        my shield from sin,
        my covering
        and saving from
        all elements and eyes,

weekly redeemed
by this routine
of flattening and
giving shape to what
        was without form
        and would remain,
        if not for this,
        a wrinkled pile of rags,

if not for one
who takes the task
of caring for me, more
than I deserve
        who tells me so,
        but knows that talk
        is cheap and love’s a chore.
        She folds my clothes.


           2
 
She folds my clothes.
I give her all
my threadbare socks and
dirty underwear,
        which is to say
        I leave them on
        the floor of lower standards,
        and forget

they are my own,
my stains, my sweat
and toil, my respons-
ibility,
        and I should be
        ashamed of der-
        ilictions, but I play
        the fool instead,

weekly relieved
of turning life
around, restoring order
to a world
        that needs reform,
        and even in
        the time it takes to write
        this silly poem,

she is the one
who does it all,
and I’m the one who
doesn’t tell her so;
        my love is cheap,
        and finding words
        is work.  And while I write,
        she folds my clothes.


02/28:

Certainty

The river is moving.  
The blackbird must be flying.
         — Wallace Stevens

          I

Winged creatures crash the corridors of spring
And call in kin from everywhere to sing
A thousand songs, all with the same refrain:
“This is our season, and we shall remain.”
At first their sound is harsh and yet in time
They bring an easy rhythm and a rhyme
To every willing ear, a melody
That fills the vernal air with “Certainty!”

And all the birds that follow share the sound
And make their own to mark their breeding ground,
Assuring anyone who comes around:
“This is our world, make note of it, and let
The record clearly show, let it be said
That every spring begins with black and red.”

         II

“— Let there be no doubt!  This is our place
and time.  We have no vagaries to chase,
no hills to climb, no valleys to endure,
no days to dream, no nights to wonder.  Here
we stand, as sure as night begins the day
and sunlight melts the snow, and here we stay;
as sure as winter ends with spring, we take
the dormant fields and sing the world awake.

Tomorrow is for such wanderers and fools
who set out from their churches and their schools
in search of something more, but in their souls
they struggle over what they want to see
and what the future holds for them.  But we
remain, reminding them of Certainty!”


02/29:

In A Plane Over The Alps, March 2015

...And I was only going here to there,
thinking my fate was somewhere far beyond
the scenery of 40,000 feet
below me. 30,000... 20... 10....

So steadily we dropped without a care
until we heard the pilot pounding on
the cockpit door, and from our side,
replete with irony: "God damn it, let me in!"

which set us all to screaming through the air
into the mountains, somewhere in between
the day dreams of our German destiny
and memories of standing on the ground

in Spain, purchasing tickets, unaware
of where an hour later we would be.


03/01:

March

March starts
like more of February;
they say it roars
but I just hear it groan
with the heaviness of
a tired coat of wool
felt warmer in December
when the wind
was not as sharp, the hope
not as brittle.

March middles like the winter’s edge;
they predicted
a revival, but the dawn
still casts its shadows
and the breeze still
blows the spirit out of me
and I can’t see
the daylight saved, the equinox
or whatever it is that happens
after Lent.

March is spent
on so many passing
celebrations,
like the day the city dyes
the river green
or the night they sit around
waiting for Elijah.
We speak of eggs and rabbits,
connecting symbols of a pagan life
to a feast of sacrifice,
but I will feel the March wind blowing,
stirring up the doubt

Until the wind dies down
and the spirit goes out.


03/02:

Fling

This playing around with words
        is a reckless fling,
A lustful binge
        and a compulsive urge;

This is my midlife crisis on the verge
Of discovery,
        the soul’s rebalancing;

This is my return to youth, remembering
Whatever whirling memories regurge
Out of the pool,
        however they emerge;

This is my search for truth, if anything
Is true, if a ring of truth can ever rise
Out of the fog
        of this pretentious surge;

These are my alibis when truths diverge
And leave me looking
        foolish in your eyes;

This is my fleeting chance to apologize
For being otherwise
        with a reckless fling.

03/03:

Moleskin 2.1: Birth

I was born in Southern Minnesota during the Kennedy years, son of a schoolteacher and a credit reporter, an only child for as long as I couldn’t remember. They say there is little, if anything, our memories can hold from the first four years, not counting what we acquire from photographs and anecdotes, and yet it is during these first years that we start to recognize our parents for who they are, we pattern ourselves indelibly on their examples and with their help we learn things we never forget: to walk, to use the bathroom, to hold a conversation. I’m pretty sure I became a Democrat in these forgotten years, even if I do not have memories of Kennedy. To this day I will not hesitate to tell you where God’s country can be found, as I have been told often enough by others. And though I do not remember a day without brothers, I know there was a time when I got all of the attention.