The calendar’s a field sown with jacks-in-the-box, 
gold doubloons, and booby traps.  The first special 
day is marked down before you know it, 
your bottom smacked, torso swaddled, form filled 
in forever.  Parents have birthdays too, 
a revelation with implications. 
Two more days set apart.  Add siblings.  Add  
best friends.  That girl you’ve got a crush on or 
the boy you want to hang with.  Wonderful 
that something everybody’s got one of 
should be the occasion of parties, presents, 
a mandatory song.  The calendar 
gets crowded as you age.  Each month, circles 
proliferate like solar lentigines
what with spouses, ex-spouses, children, 
chums, current and quondam in-laws, colleagues, 
nieces, nephews, culture heroes, grandkids—
until the year’s so packed you need to 
make a list, magnetize it to the 
Frigidaire, instruct the memorious 
I-Mac to goose your forgetfulness, remind
you to pick up a card.  Every store sells
the things, mostly dumb.  Why not?  Eight billion 
dollars’ worth moved last year.  Most calendars 
come with holidays pre-remembered, 
the official, the commercial.  All Saints’, 
Mothers’, Fathers’, St. Valentine’s, St. Stephen’s, 
New Year’s, Christmas, Chanukah, Secretaries’, 
Simchat Torah, Easter, Rosh Hashanah, 
Thanksgiving, Super Sunday, Veterans, 
Independence, Labor—even Eid al-Fitr’s
on some.  The months tear away faster and 
faster, like in those old movies.  And then, 
inexorable as insomnia, solemn 
as back pain, the deaths pile up.  What to do?  
There won’t be any ice cream or yellow  
cake.  No profit for Hallmark—where would 
you send the card?  You could kindle a blunt white 
candle, but chances are you won’t.  Like an 
armed Spaniard plunging his flag into virgin 
sand, death stakes claim on claim until the months 
are forested with them.  Most you’ll thoughtlessly
forget.  But some you just can’t.  Today, I 
stepped once more into the minefield of May.
                        

The solitary misanthrope,
ordered to stay home and hidden,
misses others, craves blind hope.
Fruit’s most longed for when forbidden.