foxtales

I am my mother’s son
I stay open to change—
A bridge builder who hopes,
But keeps what I expect
Behind the veil of me.

My mom adapted fast
While I create patterns
That give my days a beat
that make me me, but also—
Bring out the best in you.

But—

With her and you I learned:
Eyes open always, ears wide
To music bearing witness
Of wonder all around,
For no one knows when love
Breaks out, or grace will come around.

My problem is,
I still remember falling in love,
Even at my advanced age,
Like I remember learning to drive at 16.

That split-second feeling
Of knowing you have lost control
But still being in control,
Riding alone in your automobile—

A slight movement of your hand
Can send you a careening,
An adjustment of your legs, out of control,
And yet . . . all right . . .

Or learning to ride a bike
As Dad lets go of the back and somehow—
It’s all just happening,
Though you don’t know how

And meanwhile,
something you cannot touch has changed within you—
Like water flowing under ice
on the first warm day of winter

The writer watches the woodworker
Who shapes and molds inert wood to his whim
Carves and curls, the thin wood peeling
In almost translucent strips.

How did this gene skip him?
He wonders, this weird skill to look through wood and see
Life within it, shapes concealed,
And then revealed,
The wood made flesh …

The woodworker keeps peeling
The shape unseen becomes seen.
He stops to sand it gently,
A lover’s hand on naked wood,
Switches to a knife,
Carves and cuts more carefully, 
The wood falling now in slivers, not slips,
at his feet.

Finally, he hands it to you,
This wooden miracle,
A thing that did not exist before
Except as a block, a stick, a fallen limb
Picked from the forest floor and dead as Druids.

And you, in turn, hand your paper to him,
Also wood, at some point,
Where you have been scratching as he’s been carving.
He reads it, then turns to you and says—
“How in the fuck did you do that?”

Water, unwanted,
Rises in floor drains
Weeps through basement walls
Pours from an angry sky.

In a flash of light it seems,
The creek is around us,
Swirling family being sucked down …
I am vulnerable.

And vulnerability becomes everything.
It teaches me to plan ahead—
Put things on bricks
Have blankets ready
Watch forecasts anxiously—
And never let anyone in.

I think of a fish,
Flopping and gasping on a dock.
I think—who is more evolved?
One who pulls oxygen from air,
Or one who pulls it from water,
Who moves fluidly in this world,
Who only knows the wet,
But who also knows enough,
To still pray for rain?

Blinded by paradise,
All I see is beauty and hope.
The woman at the shit store
Complains that no one will work for her.
It’s a problem all over Florida, she says,
People living off unemployment,
But she could never sit still that long,
She’d go crazy, she says.

I think of her, working in her shop
One of a dozen up and down the strip
Of 1950s architecture and rotting seaside motels,
Putt-putt and Subway and the place that will take you,
For $65 a head,
Out onto an ocean that appears to be free.

She works and worries and somehow survived the pandemic,
Maybe with stimulus money? Who knows,
But here she is,
A survivor like all the others,
And therefore,
A winner.

I’ll take a full day at the pool,
Come out in the morning when it’s too cool for proper swimming,
But huddle under a towel until the heat rises,
Unbearable to be out without a quick dip
In that glorious 80 degree water.
And then back in the sun—
Lather, rinse, repeat—
All day long until it drops again (the sun)
Below the high-rises and the condos,
The Polynesian Putter sign,
The place where Hemingway took a dump in 1932,
|Enshrined forever
In a chrysalis of light and heat.

These are the same birds,
For all practical purposes—
Not literally, obviously—
But the same birds that were here when
Ponce de Leon looked for the Fountain of Youth, or whatever,
And slaves arrived from the Ivory Coast, or wherever,
Singing their songs on the blood-stained deck.

But birds know nothing of blood,
Except maybe that it smells like lunch
To the carnivores.
And why not? Feast on us,
Ye birds of prey,
Peck our eyes and limbs to the bone,
Tear our guilty flesh in strips,
|And swallow us down,
While the gay-colored flitterers
Cry their carefree pleas.

I don’t take naps
‘cause waking up is too much work.
The move from horizontal to vertical,
Gravity pulling limbs and organs
As if to say, “No, stay, just as you are.”

The inertia that spins the earth,
The force created by the spinning,
Is too much for you, and too dear—
It demands too much, and when you rest,
It just wants to demand more.

The door slammed shut, the varying explanations
The querulous looks of 1,000 inquisitors
Who just want to know—well, what did you do wrong this time?
And by the time you realize
Those voices are prattling on their own,
And only in your head,
You may as well be asleep again,
For all the good it does.

And for all the good you do,
Spinning on your rock where the g-forces pull you
When they don’t tear you apart,
The good deeds never gone unpunished
The kind word never heard
The favor never notice
The inevitability of failure,
As sure as too balls falling
From the already leaning Tower of Pisa
Will hit the earth at exactly
the
same
time

A rose, a poem
A bird in a nest
Flowers bloom, chainsaws whir–
“the diseased elms had to go”
Smell of sawdust, rain, wet sand
Apple blossoms falling
Stuck to my hand.

Sitting in the sandbox,
I can hear trucks on the highway.
It’s humid,|
The sand sticks to me,
But not sunny, cloudy.

Backyard
Sicksweet smell of apple blossoms fallen
Where is mother?
Why am I alone?
It’s all right ma, I’m only playing