Anecdotal

alone for an hour,

a strange-warm

winter Sunday,

a handsaw &

headphones,

we made a

renegade

tree disappear,

but the sapling

trunks, five in all,

at the place they

were the thickest

remain undug,

another day’s

tool & time.

…

together an hour

winding through

grocery aisles,

we two & the

wee one gather

future meals

brave  the hectic

crowds, borrowing

time from tears

that  (lucky us)

never come:

we fill a cart

with food,

with plans,

pay the tab,

load for

the unload

& put away.

…

shipping the troops

outside for an hour

a snowless deployment

rare in January:

left to their own

devices: grey sidewalks

graffito’d a winter blue,

a hill race on foot,

red bike turns,

brotherly taunts,

wrestles & rolls

in the brown

& sleep-full grass.

…

this is what it means to share an imagination:

the imagery of possibility: of unwarped cubits,

the momentary escape into the lion’s roar of labor:

throb of forearm, the aching cramp within the glove,

the shared but dreaded rituals of domestic life

turned magically into a game of hide & seek,

the pride of witnessing the brotherly bond

exult in its freedom to create & to break down:

to know that what grows must change,
that change creates loss as it provides gain,

to learn the patience of long love,

through the slow victimage of growing old

but most of all, learning the easiest lessons last:

that the anecdotes of memory are all we carry through,

that nothing remains but what is loved well,

that innocence is possible when the right task meets the right moment:

nothing teaches virtue better than the story that can’t be told,

the story that gives & gives & knows no proper way to end.