Metaxyturn Diaries

Let’s take a walk. As
we grow apart we approach
the shore. Waves draw back

the sand at our feet.
We have gone the distance and
the nothing between

us communicates.
Amidst the crashing of waves
we begin to talk.

Wisdom will say that
wisdom is the beginning
of everything good.

Wisdom shows herself
in the face of a shopper
who stops in changing

light to look at the
clouds. The brightly trimmed darkness
connects with something.

She’s excited by
this interruption. She says
goodbye wordlessly.

Who knows what that is?
You could say it’s the nothing
we share in our depths.

On cold nights I’ll crawl
under the covers. Master sleeps
on until I purr.

He’ll lie there, listen
(thinking he knows my thinking),
and go back to sleep.

Communication
between our idiot selves
is part of being

the nothings we are,
I’ll tell him, but he’s typing,
and counting the words.

Sitting by the win-
dow, staring down the cold New
England sun, I think

not of myself but
the High Sierra, sunny
granite outcrops where

I’d sit as the birds
ignored me. O, unborn com-
panion, secret,

nameless, understood
in patience, in poverty.
You’ve known me all a-

long. I know you when
out of nowhere sparkling song
and name flash as one.

No Sphinx need guard the
books open on the table. They
maintain the silence

where the poem starts.
W. S. Graham, Alice Oswald,
others. They are in

communication
with their equals on the shelves.
A democracy

of sorts. We people,
left to ourselves, lose patience
with others’ silence.

When you died sweetly
demented you blew a bloom-
sized hole in my world.

Another turning
point. Whitherto now loosened
oak leaves withering?

Molasses amber
water-starved and released to
humid human fists.

We must open our
hands to hold the passing of
beauty as we pass.

It’s the lack of why
that is beauty’s final gift
as we let it go.

Community of
festive finitude in the
glare of a fall day.

Kickass Gen Z black
leather and echo of boots
on the tearoom tiles.

In Natty Bumppo
sneakers I dance in my chair
to her boots’ tatoo.

It’s cold out there and
I see only colors out
the steamy windows.

Appearances count
more in old age as opposed
to moralities.

Beauty survives sex.
I’d like to be known for that
maxim. Time-server

that I am. Restless,
too, as change-charged Eros shapes
every present.

When I said ‘No rush’
to the barista today,
I heard your voice. It’s

a fine Fall day, change
in the yellow air, people
trying to be nice.

Your voice had an edge,
not a part of the quaint scene.
But no one noticed

other than I. I
just sat there, waiting. It took
forever to come.

‘Where’s Dad?’ I ask. ‘Oh,
out in the garden,’ Mom says.
The iris limp flags

in the autumn air
blowing in from the ocean.
Dad deadheads them one

last time. The salt air
from the Pacific reminds
me: Lead your own life.