erase electronics from everyone’s hands
then watch us, how we stare down into our cupped
palms, how our thumbs & fingers tap at air
how all of us are emptied
unsynced, as alone in the world
as we were before devices, forced to wait
to find out what happens, to attend to the here
the present, to follow ourself
quiet, alone, far from the madding crowd
I plan to drive 8,000 miles to visit
10 people I might not see otherwise
before I die
or they die
aside from cost
freeway driving the fact that I’m 77
I think I can’t but go
I don’t
attend funerals nor would I host one
dead means dead
the home planet
we’re ruining could end while I’m
on the road
my universe could
flip to an otherverse one me driving
other me dying
I might spaghettify
into the nearest black hole
A solar flare. A shooting star.
Raging & raving, the fellow
topples across the road
into the home of an old woman
with two yelping dogs. Whether she
asks him in or can’t keep him out
isn’t recorded in the formal
inquiry. Go, she says, but he won’t.
Mosquito, black fly, deer tick.
He grabs her phone when she says
she’ll dial 911. He runs next door
where an old man lets him in
though his wife protests. She knows
what the fellow’s up to, drunk
& disorderly. He wants more
drink & a shoulder to cry on.
Brown bats sweep the roofline.
She calls the police, because what
do you do when someone needs
help, someone who’s a neighbor
surely, but not family, not a friend,
only a local, an aging man, parents
dead, wife gone, children if any
grown & out of state, a broken
branch of a bleeding heart.
He needs what can’t be had
since priests have failed & police
can’t replace them. This two-bit
town in our soon-to-fail nation
has no store, no bar, no rest house,
no soup kitchen, no place to go
day or night. Drunk & disorderly
sirens yowl, blue lights blaze.
The fellow is a local. What good
is being a local if here includes
no community to take you in?
fawns crisscross sunshine
wildflowers daub the leafy loam
a congregation of songbirds
flit through a thicket’s maze
green meets green meets green
fetor wicks up from black mire
woodpeckered trees await wind
the lurch & whump of falling
the guard fox barks, yearning
fills the swirling clouds of gnats
silver of late afternoon
newts freckle water weeds
This December’s bird count
includes individuals mislaid
or forgotten by fall’s migration.
One rears a late hatch
a second clings to a mate
of another species, a third
sings so long it misreads
leaf-fall for the rite of spring.
These poor few will quake
& slump & die over winter.
They will make up no part of
spring’s count. No one
save a stray god will mark
their loss, bless their bones.
We walk a slow three miles along a forest trail
pawed by game, rutted by melt & frequent rain.
Thousands of wildflowers spring from leaf-fall —
trout lily, trillium, bloodroot, dutchman’s breeches
noble hepatica, blue cohosh, early meadow rue.
Only near the end do I start to stumble, my eight-
decade-old feet beginning to flag, the rest of me
wanting to be stronger, to walk & witness longer
but also to be sitting back in the car. My brother
stumbles all the distance but pays age no mind.
My grandchildren, white sneakers caked with mud
thumbs now & again on phones, all but prance.
we lie scattered
like the contents of an upturned purse
his motorcycle stalled & steaming
the driver reaches
hot hands to noonday sun
I stumble to my feet
one child clutched in my arms
the other child in a bush across the road
as we were falling I thought
this is death, & it’s okay
because we’re all so happy to be alive
shakily, we reassemble
incomprehensibly, no one’s hurt
the driver rights his toppled ride
one foot peg is skewed
the gas tank bears a fresh indent
rainbows marble
the spray of gravel that spilled us
a rustling from the brush
yields three women sheathed
crown to sole in dusty black
squealing, crooning
syllables we can’t decipher
they unwrap hard candies
push them into the children’s mouths
then all of us, helplessly, laugh
the day darkens
until I can no longer read
I wait, my cat waits
a squirrel arcs through fallen leaves
across the yard into woods
until the day brightens
abruptly, as if
the end of the day runs backward
until I can read again
the moon, the sun
paint shadows on my page
what I feel to be snowed in
(ten inches in twenty hours)
is relief, I’m grateful
for everything I cannot do —
drive out into the greater world
meet others, satisfy needs
all these are denied me
I’m inside, warm & dry
the cats asleep for another
day & night, nothing
to watch through iced-over
glass, squirrels & birds
hunkered wherever they hunker
when snow covers all
my red car is white
my white house nearly
disappears, the moon slings
long shadows of tall trees
morning’s rays will melt
what’s frozen, woo what hides
stiff limbed, blurry eyed
bundled up (snow pants
fat parka) I’ll shovel
(sate my urge to move about)
even without somewhere to go
someone to see beyond
these forms caged in crystal —
time to set them free
woodchuck, whistlepig, Marmota monax
I’ve seen no fresh rootling since fall
the burrow holes — one north, one east —
lie leaf covered, ringed by dry rubble
yet my groundhog can’t be still asleep
not in this too warm faux-spring
when black bears are out, gouging
black smears across muddy ground
hungry to nobble the feeblest scent
thoughts of my groundhog energize me
— warm brown bristles, snub nose —
likely I’ll find him when a cat on a sill
stiffens & stares — look, life, out there
I too might well, with warmth, emerge
