Walk in an Autumn Cemetery


The dead are so alive,
while we, the living,
stroke TV and computers.
Not that I’d change places— 

I’ll have to soon enough.
Coffins cramp and cremation 
sounds odd to a guy like me 
who hates hot weather.  But 

a cemetery, calm and quiet,
why feel uneasy there?  Epitaphs
reveal the dead more
than decades of words when

they lived—a smoker’s epitaph: 
I made an ash of myself.
Many dead have that insouciance.  
The living have 

situation comedies.  As I walk, 
cat maples sit still, 
stretch and watch.
A red leaf

runs up like a message boy
with a telegram: You’re next!
it reads.  I bolt— 
grass arms hold me in place.
 
-first appeared in The Battered Suitcase.


Hortense


You don’t look like a bird 
who wants to make friends.  Your eyes,
swamp water at night.  I could drown in them 
whether I’m careful or not.  You gnaw
 
mouse guts.  The Wildlife Center 
tends to your wishes, 
lets you walk around before they open.  
You run the place, not them.  

I’m told you’re around forty.  
With a broken wing, you hardly made it 
to the sky, didn’t have the pleasure 
of fixing your stare and leaping down, 
claws out.  Maybe a turkey vulture 

shouldn’t have everything done for her.  
If one has to be pampered, I’m glad it’s you.  
And sad too. 





8:45 P.M.


When Jeff and Jerry sit on the couch 
after a long day, they often say little.  
Peggy Lee rides a sleigh 
out of the propane fireplace.  Sometimes 
they don’t even wave, 
even when she sings “Is That All There Is?”   

Silence, an unplugged engine, beautiful, 
in its way, like a glass filled 
with artificial snow, shaken, set on the mantle.  

Silence is a horse that lies down in the field.   

Some days it’s best to send words out to play.  
Sit like two Buddhas, stone, 
the world slipping 
into pajamas and going to sleep.