NOTHING GAINED

          —for Bret & Joe

Back when we
were young
and taut, we thought
that less
was a kind
of loss. but now
that we’re old
and loose
and have slowed (if not
given up) our pursuit
of more, we find
we’re consoled
with the prize
of enough
and rewarded
by the sight of new
wrinkles in our
faces, since
we’ve finally come
to view these depressions
the way they were 

meant to be billed 

in the first place:

not as scars,
but basins—filled
not with loss,
but space.

 

TRY NOT TO TRY

No matter how elaborate,

or sensitive, or vast—

no nuclear quantum
logic clock can
give you back your past,

fly you to the future,

or even tell you 

when it’s now.

If you really want the gift

of this subtle, stubborn,

fugitive instant, 

you do not have to 

wrench it 

like the sword 

from its plinth 

of inscrutable stone; 

you only have to take 

and hold it—

but first, you must know 

that it comes 

with the prerequisite

that you listen 

and accept it 

for what it is—or 

was, anyhow.

NOT THE CONCEPT OF A MIRACLE BUT A MIRACLE ITSELF

Name its species;

call it 

gorgeous;

describe for us its color

and texture 

and smell.

None of this 

captures 

the wordless desperation

of a few scrawny 

leaves and petals—clawing 

for the sun.

 

IMMACULATE CONSUMPTION

It’s easy to recognize

Christ on the cross—

refusing 

their speared sponge,

heart wide-open.

Harder to find 

god at the five-and-dime—

rifling through our miracle 

cures, quart-size 

lip gloss, government cheese; 

squeezing every 

oblate orange there—

looking

for a thicker skin.

PROOF

Before you start to whine 

about your isolation’s

lengths, remember:

absence is the medium

which allows love’s waves
to propagate.

Like a rebar,
it adds strength—and thereby,
even estrangement entwines.

In this rigorous art,
Descartes himself was 

quite insistent:

no matter
how distant-
ly far apart,

two separate points
make one un-
broken line.

THE ANTIDOTE

Why is there no Ex-Lax 

for the constipated heart? 

No ipecac syrup after 

love’s poison dart?

Sometimes, we've been told,
you need that pump to heave

before the gunk of old
relationships will truly up-and-leave.

It’s either that, or drive up 

at a fast clip and fling

the poor diseased thing 

through the window of a flower shop—

or better still, make it scream
and march until it drops

from the ledge around the top 

of the Hallmark Channel building.

DEVOTIONAL

After meager 

supper and the dousing

of fire: 

the somnolent buzz

of katydids and crickets

chanting their drowsy
vespers from the thickets 

in the evening’s dying embers—

as if to sing 

this doleful meridian

and its citizens, still 

hampered by their 

misbegotten promises  

and heavily 

laden with drips 

of condensation 

from the leaky 

spigot of unfinished business,

more surely tonight
and swifter than ever 

to dreamless
undramatic slumber.