Rambling through the brown hills and
rumpled ridges from the observatory
that reminded me every element in
my body (carbon, calcium, nitrogen,
hydrogen, phosphorus, and the like)
came from an ancient star—but
all I can think about are swaths of
star-drenched redwoods, stippled starfish,
all the star-crossed lovers in the world who
shoot past each other, just out of reach.
In these moments after the molten sun
has sunk under the Pacific, a raw wind
whipping through the ribs of the Jeep and
my friend’s bare shoulder leaning into
my own tank-topped chest, I gaze up,
past the slender palms and power lines
to the glimmering specks in the dark
purple ocean of the sky, and consider
how the chemicals were put to better use.
– Ben Groner III…
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Linger awhile . . . so fair thou art.
–Goethe, Faust
the little honorary pallbearers
place their boutonnieres
on the casket before it is lowered,
but for once I am not thinking
about death or about the woman
I knew well long ago, nor—
when people I haven’t seen
for decades hug me as if
just last night we were swapping
stories around someone’s back-
yard fire pit—nor am I, in this
moment, obsessing about
the passage of time, caught
up instead, as it comes over
the slight rise, weaving through
the headstones, silk roses, teddy
bears, tiny American flags,
the guy in a straw hat throwing
wilted flowersinto the back
of a pickup truck, struck
by the sound of someone else’s
bagpipe procession, the wind
taking some notes, softening
the edges of others so that
one could almost believe
in some other land there, foreign
but familiar, just over the hill,
but fornow it’s enough to be here
in this moment, the one in which
my granddaughter kisses my wet
cheek, reminding me of nothing else,
carrying with it no dramatic irony,
no conceit, just a moment
like so many, these days,
I might wish to let linger.…
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For a week, the rose lived. Nightly, I brushed my nose against petals, preferring you. This is what I know: when a rose begins to die it gives up its color. At the edges, hardness and darkness take shape. Inside, blushing red petals cling to each other. This is a final intimacy, a softness enduring.
*
I know because I pulled at the petals till I got to the core, and I held the petals against my outstretched palm, fascinated by the natural bends, the blends of red—I don’t want our love to take on these darker shades. I want us as the last two petals on the stem. I remember Vermont and Italy and the miles in between; my belly without your hand; your chest without my head.…
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There’s a piece of trash at the gas station
Stationary, sitting on the sidewalk
Walking towards me is a woman
A woman that says,
“Hey boy, want some company?”
And when she asks if I want company
I do want company
But company shouldn’t present as it does presently
It presents as
Looking for you across the room
Room to grow in the space you gave me
Space that let me lean into uncertainty
Like I leaned into my mother’s arms
The day you left and when you left
I was all dressed up for church
It was a robin’s egg dress shirt
A blue to match the sky
And a tiny blazer that wasn’t quite my size
And you picked me up and kissed me…
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It starts like threading yarn in a needle threading the vein
turning red pulling vocal cord blood and muscle
the things that grow in you like algae
blooming on a lake as blue as agate or turquoise—
do you want to be that lake? Maybe the granite beneath
it? The pull of iron the streams turning to rust?
You become flotsam on the shore:
driftwood pine needles blush herb and sunrise gore…
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I wrap them like fine china in layers
of old newspapers and bubble wrap
andstill I know that the moving man
will drop the box or hit a pothole
on that bad stretch of road heading
out of town and something will crack.
All spring I have watched song
sparrows readying their nest in the rotting
crotch of a birch tree, laying in twigs
and leaves and feathers, lacing it up
withstring pulled from the canvas
deck chairs, only to have the arborist…
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More than a stirring, more than a rag soaked in gasoline, these nights in the streets are about need.
It all gets televised, and television is about something else: a box or a flattened box, a profound stillness masquerading as movement.
No Future becomes a slogan, and then we move on. We live the No.
A billion smaller boxes. Little coffins for ideas.
There’ll be time enough for mindlessness. A spoon and a melting lawn gnome.
I want to inject my cell phone. Smart drugs. Traffic cones. Dunce caps. Safety orange. Blaze orange.
We gorge on that which muddies up the blood.
– Glen Armstrong…
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