NaPoWriMo - Aprils

Hidden in a drawer
among the knives and lighters -
up where the kids can't reach -
is an envelope filled with every April
I have ever lived.

April because it offers the most reliable
history of variation,
the occasional blizzard
poking out, askew among
heat waves and drenching gullywashers,
tornadoes roughing up the edges
of fall-familiar days.

April because it lives in a sure hope
after winter,
and I love winter,
but still thirst for summer come April.

April because it has the heaviest lift,
innumerable tons of foliage,
leaves needing lofting up to
bare branches,
and the innumerable tons of
new rain needed to maintain it.

April because each one is remembered
as its own crossing.

Sometimes, late at night,
I take them out and spread them
on the coffee table,
and reread each one.

April, because it always had
the most to teach.

4-30-2014

Old teeth,
graven
with

remembered

terrifying
   shadows,

impossibly;

curves
    in
carved
steel,

having had
left in me
old spring,
and,
still,
worn upward
from dredged pockets,

cold wrists,

slivered semicircles
forged
among
leaf tips.

They have had me,

thieving straightaways;

memorized

edges of saplings;

late avenues of molten leaf litter;

the leather strops

of empty municipal parks.

4-25-2014

It is not
a way through,

but the birds
arrange trees

In the dusk.
Who's to say?

4-24-2014

I know that in some measure
my boys are kept too far from
who I am.

They sleep
in their unembarrassed ways -

their breathings recalling
in me my own father;
The ways he had no father.

The way the wind rushes,
and breathes

along the usuals,

and the knotted fists of
east
pile up at the ends of west.

They love the singing of branch ends
in tall maples.

The wind.

The purple night.

NaPoWriMo 4-22-2014

I once watched a man
imitate the sound
of an engine failing
for five straight,
sawtooth minutes
in the deep woods,
emptied of pathways
at dusk
in or out.

The treetops
in the failing brown light
took on sickle shapes
and leaned in
close together,
staring.

NaPoWriMo 4-20-2014: Easter

That confusingly appropriate episode
on a bewilderingly beautiful
near-Chicago Easter afternoon,
when a baby bunny is discovered
hopelessly wedged between the spring's
fresh rabbit fencing
and the galvanized garage-side;

When you carefully coax it backwards to freedom,
and it scrambles blindingly
back toward its trap,
then pivots suddenly and bolts, panicked,
into the open garage,
where you chase and corner it and
gently bring it to your hands
while the kids cheer,

and you walk,
caressing its fuzzy head and calmly whispering
assurances,

and you place it safely under the yews.

Then ten minutes later,
a shrill rabbit-shaped cry
when the pickup, its driver cautiously eyeing
your children in the yard,
meets the tiny rabbit in the road.

Right in front of the house.
In front of the wife and kids.

Two plastic bags,
the kids banished to the back,
you approach the bundle of dead fir
in the street.

But its heart is beating
there, still,
a million miles a minute,
its terrified eyes
unblinking, and wide
and staring up at your own.

And you have to retrieve a shovel,
quickly,
to finish what the truck did not.

The same shaking hands
that had loved
this perfectly formed, gray
gathering of misadventure
so carefully before,
now so carefully aim,
and swing for a quick end

there,
on Easter Sunday,
and hurrying to do it,
in front of God
and all the neighbors.

4-19-2014

Easter best?

Sure.

Because after death and redemption and resurrection,

I am sure God expects
Lily-pure fragrance,
Sharp pleats
And bright pastels.

Nothing grave-stenched,
Or smoldering,
Or as honest as the
Inconsequence
Of any sacrifice we could bring.

WaPoWriMo - Good Friday

We get the day off.
I usually ruin it:
I know what I cost.

NaPoWriMo - 4-18-2014

I know what you did,
and what it means.

But I am still
spending time
propped
beneath remote
Canadian trestles,

begging spark
along
paths of trespass.

I am fat with my shame.

And the grace
that you so freely give
does not ever pierce
the hearts
that you have hardened.

NaPoWriMo - 4-18? Something?

I still stab
numb-thumbed after
what answer
the shoulder
and the road
expect
after all that asking,

and silences after.

You can sharpen
anything with
anything:

That much is clear.

Sunset came
again
again,
in smoke-eyed waves
pouring
clockwork
over the black-branched hills;

That old
oxidized
shadow of dawn.

That much I know;

And this:

The dark is present
in the answer;
and spark as well;
and fatwood,
and youth.

NaPoWriMo - 4-17-2014

I dreamt that a man from
Global Facilities found me
in a conference room at HQ,
interrupting to inform me
that the agreed-upon move
was complete.

I spent the night in short sleeves
and thin khakis, in the cold rush, lashing pens
and desk legs to grabiron
with shoe laces and torn socks
and Canadian jam knots.

NaPoWriMo 4-16-2014: The Bay of Fundy

Main streets
full with half doors,
top halves
open, light spilled
from behind

carve gray
mineshafts into
shore-fog

and form a closeness,
or maybe closenesses
tempering
an unspeakable expanse.

These counties
collapse and fold
in upon themselves
like dying spiders,
sloppy with
five-dollar lobster
pouring out
into the walk-up, starless dark.

The surviving traffic
at the far end of the country
steers by knee
through
centerless towns;

towns that do something like welcome
hungry
traversers.

Nearby,
The Bay of Fundy
does
what the Bay of Fundy does,

And
leafless trees
go thin, fragile,
silver with frost
where they meet the assumed sky,

and sweat
in heavy rivulets
and pourings
where they cling to the earth.

NaPoWriMo 4-15-2014

I dreamt that a man from
Global Facilities found me
in a conference room at HQ,
interrupting to inform me
that the agreed-upon move
was complete.

I spent the night in short sleeves
and thin khakis, in the cold rush, lashing pens
and desk legs to grabiron
with shoe laces and torn socks
and Canadian jam knots.

NaPoWriMo - 4-14-2014

Calm
down.

If I could
have taught your
corpse
to fly
the way
your corpse
has dreamt
of flying,

over the North Shore
libraries
and student unions,

I would have
done it by now,

showing to you
plainly
unceasing
ebbings, retreatings
of shoreline.

All that's gone along now,

And you wear the truth
of tired men.

You protect yourself
those crazy ways.
Those

arms across an earthen face,
all elbows and knees,

bones like roots.

NaPoWriMo 4-13-2014 - Palm Sunday

Later,
after the bokeh haze
of adaptations
crafted for children

concerning
your arrival,
your passing through

dimmed

from fragile pastels
to harsh, oxidized
firmament,

The trouble between us began.

Some years,
frost still
caked the soil;
and the coat racks
in the foyer
still swelled
the way they did on Christmas Eve.

Other years,
the doors and windows
were propped open,
and the ceiling fans turned,
and Sunday School
spilled out onto the
eleven-o'-clock
lawn.

We took turns
passing hands
over the cornerstone:

Remembrances that were
not holidays;
milestones
adrift
upon the ancient calendars;
and days dreamlike
and unsteady

when we were led,
hastily choreographed,
up from behind the choirloft
stairs,

confused palm fronds
waving in imaginary abandon.

When I surrendered
to your triumphant
entrance,
I was but a child.

How could I have known
the dark depths of your great will;
the dread potential
of your great silence?

NaPoWriMo 4-12-2014

Old tree, you are ever before me.

Have been.

In terror and waiting
and want,
I have memorized your
silhouette's visage
before me;

trunk and daughter limbs
reaching far above
the noise of formless
branch-snappers
that make their way
around my presence,

reaching for
the cooling stars while your
outer branches thin
and
fall and curve
earthward,

near a supposed fire.

NaPoWriMo 4-11-2014

Unembarrassed leaves
Emerge from beneath winter
And do not realize.

NaPoWriMo 4-10-2014

The house in spring
still remembers early February:
the fierce wind out of the north;
the ugly ripples of earth
pushed up by the roots
of hunkered down maples
that made the snow
drift just shy of
the foundation.

NaPoWriMo 4-9-2014

I remember hauling enormous
burlap sacks brimming with iron
each night
up indefatigable hills
to impossible clearings,
or down
to shores of hidden, kettle-held lakes.

And an anvil;

Coal;

And hours,
sometimes days
carved
from the abundant fat of my youth.

I'd cultivate fire
and sling slag first into it
then out, and up upon the anvil,
and hammer great piles of
letters and leavings from it -
the beginnings
of names, each night,
of never named
things.

And all of it seeming so easy.

NaPoWriMO 4-8-2014

The nine-year-old
and the six-year-old
beg after folding knives,
jumping up and down
the way they do,
their pleading eyes
appealing to my own youth.

They do not appreciate
the old man's memory:
that storied history of
slip-joint blades folded over onto knuckles.

NaPoWriMo 4-7-2014

After work, the ride home can sometimes go otherworldly,
moving from four lanes and
traffic lights
to other kinds of intersections.

And the day's strategic opportunities
and change-managed tragedies
slowly go to tatter and fray,
and a strange dusk-before-dusk
appears between the still-empty houses,
and the trees slowly grown thicker, plentiful.

A veil between things, over the sky
thins,
and I round each curve
expecting silhouettes
of the departed dead
in the lowering glare of the sun.

NaPoWriMo 4-6-2014 - Rivers

Are you amazed
that the river
chooses to keep to its edges
well enough that
unmovable bridges can be
lofted across it,
and you can boldly
approach, and stand,
and your children
play alongside it?

They are like herds
that stay their paths,

But it doesn't have to be that way.

Rivers are wild things,
and go where they want.

You know this.
They are not always patient,
or resigned to their chosen courses.

Once in a while
one rears up and consumes
acres of farmland,
generations
of homesteads. Towns.

Build your house too close to one
and you'll find out eventually.

Proud Chicago reversed
the course of its river.

An earthquake rerouted
the Mississippi not far from there.

But make no mistake:
they went along willingly.

And if they were to change their minds,
not one damnable suit in Springfield
could dissuade or stop them.

     And those are just the rivers.

NaPoWriMo 4-5-14

"Anything,"

I said,

because
of everything,

Palms up,

blood clouds blooming
from around my knees
in the Canal Park shallows.

NaPoWriMo 4-4-2014

One day,
all the dreams
in the house
the night before
had been so hard

that
in the morning
we rose to find
old years suspended
in the still air
of the living room.

You have decisions to make
when you wake up
finding that.

Everyone knows
it sounds humorous,
or comfortable,
or improbable,

But when it actually happens
to you
it is

A deep lake of silence.
A chain of acres
that children will
pull behind them
across all of their days.

NaPoWriMo #3

My age is always before me,
and my studied ways of faltering.

I remember
in it my sons;

and for it,
my father:

How he wrapped his uncovered hand
around my wrist,

pulled my weight
above his own strength

so that I,
at times,
among his stumble,
would float above the drifts.

NaPoWriMo 4-2-2014

I'm not sure
what you'd like to learn
from me
about
early spring,

otherwise
I would say more.

There was that southern
Michigan April -
driver's licenses tucked tight in
wallets -
when nonetheless

we climbed ladder-like
tree limbs
and continued to pretend.

Eight-barrel
evenings
pulled themselves
along
inland lakes -

over dusk and across
Sundays.

That's the way it was;

Joy Division,
Buddy Holly,
and the Gaithers.

Later, alone,
I dreamed
tin-gold dawns;
lists of ways to wait.

NaPoWriMo 4-1-2014

My wits have not been with me.

And the well-squared
concrete pathway
lately
in the southside morning
has bristled with
old sets
of stops and starts
of miles
in the low spring
sun.

And with each yard
I trample
toward
employee entrances,

thin roots
and
sunsets
underneath
still - somehow -
crave upward

for my ankles
and my calves.

And I still
murmur
horseshoes in my sleep,
and locksprings,
and pyrite,
and gunflint,
and riversides,
and old friends gone acquaintence,

And this
terrifying grace that I have
so adored
and for so long
wondered after,
heaved upward
from the earth.

In my days - these days -
with sons -
I am concerned

with recalling
treasured nights
correctly.

But if I
should fail -

again; again -

I know
my feet
owe nothing
to my wits.