It’s like I’ve been dropping old watches
into the river for years really,
and can no longer remember why.
Most things are like that. Once I asked
the addled man why he carried 
that key ring with thirty or more keys
everywhere he went, though he never
unlocked any doors. He smiled, 
though not at me, and addressing
the moon maybe, said "Oh, it's just habit,
I suppose." The thing is, we're all fools
but only some of us are holy fools.
A fox running cross fields can turn
into almost anything if you blink,
and you will always blink. Puff 
of milkweed silk drifting into breeze
over a treeline that wasn't there
a second ago. The neighbor who 
mows his lawn right through 
the thunderstorm—he doesn't look
happy, but even as I think that 
it is joined by my mother's voice
saying "Happy is as happy does,"
and I wonder how many other things
there are left for me not to understand.  
                        

there's a spin that hums 
in place like we do, or try to, 
moving through a countryside
     —Brent Goodman

When climbing the path
up from the storm-swollen 

creek, boots slipping
in spring mud,

I reach a spot at which
the water’s roilng din

exactly matches the sweep
of cool wind through the oaks

atop the ridge. I like to balance
at that still point, neither

rising nor falling, letting
a sound as old as creation

and fine as mist on my face 
wash over me.

It is a place you’ll find on 
no map, erasing and rewriting

itself continually, a moving
target, a sort of hum 

spinning deep within,
—but a place, once found,

I needn’t ever leave.
                        

		—for Janice McSherry

Bad habits pursued like old lovers.
Genetic roulette. Idiot diets.
Some fool for a doctor, and no
second opinion. Reasons stack
like cereal boxes at aisle's end:
tall, glossy, symmetrical reasons.

Like Maupassant's old man,
we volley back each obit with queries:

Was he a booze hound? Too fat?
Did she work out? Was she
one of those sun queens as a girl?
Drop a load of acid in college?
When was the last time he went in
for a checkup? Never? Well, then.

No such thing as fate, my friends.
You do not just die. Not with
new treatments for every this and that.
Not with risk factors like ours, so low
they don't even appear on the chart.
Not with our Moms and our Dads,
who three miles rain or shine
and lifted weights into their nineties.

		*

We're like a bomber crew
heading out for our thirtieth mission—
some of us grim, some jaunty, 
some inscrutably businesslike
—but all with our lockets,
our loveletters, our various bibles
tucked away, talismans deep in our pockets.

		*

Sure, we heard about Randy. It's sad,
but people don't just blink out
with strokes at fifty-six—
not unless they've ignored a decade
or two of high blood, not unless
their hearts leak or they live
on peanuts and chips and drink themselves
to sleep. So we're sorry, but Randy
was a smoker for sure, and as for
his youthful habits, well, we could
tell you some stories.

He could have picked up a hobby
or a dog, both of which have been shown
to voodoo down your cholesterol.
He should have joined a gym. 
You can't choose your parents,
of course, but we seem to recall
Randy's father kicking the same way
twenty years back. Fair warning.

		*

We don't know quite how, but Randy
screwed up again. Just like the time
he clowned his way off his perch
high in a spruce tree and turned blue
before he got his breath back.
Or the afternoon he bobbled
two easy pop flies in a row
to let in the winning runs.
Whatever it was, he didn't just die.

What is this, the middle ages?
The days of leaches and belladonna,
baskets of worthless weedy simples
and smeared aromatic mud.
These days that stuff won't wash.
And the dead have a lot of explaining to do.