The Hobbyists
My father used to collect cigars
and pipes and tobacco, my mother
spices and laundry detergents.
I collect coins and notes, and it
seems apparent that we are
a bad-collectors' race, gather less,
hoard nothing, and spend it all.
I call, "Can you send me a special issue.
This month has been a trouble."
They used to say, "No trouble, at all."
These days silence needs a catalogue;
I don't have the references, comprehension
of hush, of the backdrop noises to be a connoisseur.
Middle Journey
My co-passenger talks all hears.
She pours her concerns over a niece
and what she thinks as not a nice life
about over the free flowing men
in her one bedroom apartment.
She talks on her ancient smart phone.
Her ears and profile hide behind it.
We ride the corpse of the silence.
a grey bus in black, and we see
circles and squares of the fields
and patterns in the crops. The vehicle
halts in the midst of nowhere.
Her niece comes on board and
behind her the bevy of men made of words.
Save That Shyness
Do you recall the first time
your class teacher noticed you?
The good, bad and the coy feelings?
If you have felt shyness, save it,
keep it alive, that flame, eternal,
a wound too to give life its meaning.
Do you remember me? I have been
thinking of you and that classroom
lately. I think of the flame, winter
how some survive. I think of a boar
cross a marsh, of a gossamer alight
by a will-o'-the-wisp.
To The Dock
(to Pat)
The dock, an infinity bottle
of the path, empties and hurls
the end of the way into the water
thick and full of shattered-glass light.
The violence of the act makes us all laugh.
The egrets and one black swan
leaves the spot for their meditation
for food and for digestion,
to the quiet heart of the water.
When we settle everything
becomes wooden, inside - our hearts
and other organs and outside -
where we sit, spread some mild and
spicy snacks, and the wooden
becomes our skin in-between.
We chug some honest down to earth
shines, and for one moment a friend
screams, "Eyes. I cannot see!" just for fun,
and because noon has hit the water,
because of the fish, siren of a wind,
and because our eyes have become wooden,
good, solid, monochrome, perfumed
with water and sweating, cool to touch,
sit and write the history of fishing not war.
The House Isn't In My Father
He left the house, town, station, world
a long short time ago or perchance
the span feels short albeit more years
have passed than I have lived. He left.
My father isn't in the house. The planet spins.
The highways on its skin bears the skid marks
as if not his departure but we all are accidental.
We ride a train, and no station belongs
to our destination. We halt at some random one,
walk towards a frame of woods, bricks and glass.
We step behind it and smile every time
a stranger passes it.
A Memory of Voice
His voice, a memory, I found him
wordless, scribbling
with a Wing Wung fountain pen
about the emergency steps.
His hands, varicose, showed the blue
footprints of the night time
deep vein thrombosis.
He scribbled, 'CALL'. Call his doctor,
call his brother, call the sky
and say 'Wait'. Wait. My uncle
stared at the fly on the floor.
I saw the reflections
of a sudden speech impaired man
through my buzzing eyes.
When I began calling I had
a stranger's voice; my throat
had a note of blood clotted dark.
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