*

*

Monday, February 24, 2014

The First Thing I Remember Is A Dragonfly

I remember a certain dragonfly.
And in remembering, I surrender.
And in that surrendering, I struggle,

And wander along the Calumet —
The breathless length of Cline Avenue —
The sock-soaked, spring grasslands by the tracks.

Our fathers shopped at Sears; served Church;
Passed through gates, sealed seams, and undid
Wickedness done to them and theirs

In years hard-fought-for and lost —
In ways slow to yield and give.
(They remembered dragonflies.)

The Apostle Paul stands
In all my Christmases,
And nothing undoes this.

And where I remain,
With roads and angles,
And all those traces,

The firelight dies.
The jungle thins.
The days go joke.

(Dragonfly.)

Grace or fate.

A Christmas.

I pause,
and give
myself

to
a
grace.

Friday, February 14, 2014

2-14-2014

I dreamt
within it,

the way
spark and slag
shape snow.

I threw a decade's night
of black
scarves across a fire.

I pushed a boot-pulled
skin
across zodiacal
light.

I gave an interstate;

A house;

Things that are hard
to give up
And easy to give.

I shook a work
from around my neck

And poured through
front doors.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

2-11-2014

Do you say
snow machine
or snowmobile,

These days escaping
Mittened dawns;

These uncle's walls
spinning
in hall-light

and ankles, naked in boots?

Do you understand
what splits the difference,
when all light is blue,
and all traversed

Wide-circled, tracks
turn clockwork
over passage?

In dreams,
the pines have been
planted
in patterns.

(Do you say
dusk,
or twilight?)

Do you hear
the ring of the bell
before
or after
church?

Have you
reached out
to catch it?

The dream of
old Chicago
and your
remembered days,
and the road-edges
miled up
like muscular serpents
mocking
your crushing heel
in vain.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

February

I dreamt I was in the office.

A package came,
for some vague reason, announced.

I stood up
and remembered
graffiti on the wood
stake fence
beside the T-Mart
in Dolton.

I pushed the arms
of my chair
underneath
my granted desk

such that a thin, imperceptible
layer of nylon
was shed, and fell,
it's echo
arriving on a factory floor
forty years before
near my father's feet.

"A knife!"
They said,

And I made my way
from the back door
across the backyard
to the stopped line
of torpedo cars

Walking in my socks
Toward the mail slots.

At some point,
I was the cause of fire.
And that surprised some.

There was a polite struggle;

A severe angle

wrapped in crayon and
construction paper.

Someone mentioned forge-fire,

and there was a contest:

Something I won
in the cul-de-sac
back amongst the trails,
or something
I was allowed to win.

In the end,
a river-wrapped
blade
washed up in the
mail
near my desk.

My co-workers and
direct reports were
embarrassed.

And well they should have been.