Roofs

I wake for the last
time tonight. At my age night
blends into day but

the cold of the floor
on my naked feet shocks me.
Above the grand roofs

of Edgewood the trees
flame out at first light today.
Eden not as fine.

Contingency is.
At this extreme of my life,
I’m recalled to be.

Laugh

World of talking heads.
Peacemaker claimed by roadside
bomb, re BBC.

City streets over-
flow with signs: all is not well,
though all shall be well.

Alloy of bronze and
cheek mixed for these verses. Please
laugh if you want to.

Saudade

The turn of the year.
Dried maple leaves scrape the bricks
of the sidewalks here.

An edgy sound. You —-
though I keep wanting to tell
you things—-gone for good,

don’t care. Yet wanting
lives in your absense, my lack
a gift of God’s love,

and so I gaze out
the window, the leaves happy-
making as you say.

Elsewhere

And unity? E
pluribus unum? The La-
tin doesn’t cut it.

Still I read Horace
at breakfast, tension of con-
cepts the only hope.

Click of cutlery
on china, the dull hum of
humans waking up.

Smell the coffee as
the civil war explodes our
myths, we the people.

Intermission

In those days, at school—-
a ‘religious school,’ mind—-
mathematics and

theatre: two in-
finites. I learned transitions
when the lights went out.

Waking to the bad
infinite, in time I came
to love the finite.

Now when my lover
takes his bows I hold my ap—
plause till we get home.

Entertained

I watch the kitty
play with the dying housefly.
Always already

bewitched, says the phil-
osopher who loves jokes and
truth. Homo Ludens.

The aging body
entertains pain, a private
hell. Manic laughter

is also a gift—-
spontaneous, free, grotesque—-
absolving the flesh.

Quaint

The sound of crickets
once inside the old house I
return to each night.

I stand in darkness,
the sound of crickets welcome
and welcoming. Home.

Like stars to nomads,
this quaint music orients
me beyond myself.