Excessive Humility, Excessive Pride

November Poem a Day Challenge: Day 12

"What am I now that I was then?”             
 [Delmore Schwartz]

It is impossible to gather the wisdom of childhood.
It is supplanted by knowledge & worry & growth,
but the wonder in it is irreplaceable, inimitable,
& all we seek through the following years is its insight.

The traces remain & are visible in offspring’s offerings:

looks, cries, features, & fears trigger memories

the way wind shakes trees sending the leaves into

familiar scatterings to be made into piles for deliverance.

Listen, sons, hold on to it as long as you can,

fight the urge to grow up to the plans we’ll inevitably make,

learn how to laugh like you do now when the world suggests resignation,

hold on to the wonder in the tiniest things when everything urges bigger, biggest, best.

You are not only the future, of which I am proud,

You are the perfect now, the acme of potential that humbles me with every smile.

Day 28

 What Really Happened

He didn't come out of nowhere.
We were a few clicks south of Oskie
when our paths met: I south toward work,
he east toward sun & morning heat.

It is true that our eyes met, eyes black with fear,
mine--projected there, which was not panic.
No slow, no swerve, just we two & the slowing
of time (caused by the noticing of smaller incriments).

A last gasp before impact & the emptying of contents,
crumpling of metal, smashing of plastic & strength of glass.
It was not a decision to turn back instead of leaping into my lap,
it was momentum, inertia, and reciprocal luck.

It's also true that the day's lessons started too early to go well.
Returning home, there was nothing that could stop the deep sleep of the guilty.

Day 22: I thought I posted this yesterday.

Culture War


Let’s face it: it is all your fault.
No matter who you are, you did it.
Listened to the wrong ideas,
soaked in the loudest lies,
sipped or gulped them down
at breakfast or on the morning commute.

The space between our arguments is not
demilitarized, but booby-trapped & bloody.
Your choice of network defines you;
don’t you dare switch the channel.
It’s worse than you thought, Declan,
we’ve anesthetized the way that we hear.

If have no choice but to bar the door, man the fall-out shelter.
I'm selling my books for food.

Day 11/11

No One Wants to Know

It hit me today that they don’t really know who I am.

I certainly don’t know them, don’t need to beyond

the here & there hour, the rushed or well-thought paper,

the after school briefing, quick question, occasional cry.

When the needy one, full of storm-fear never grown out of

& compulsion—making it all seem like destruction—asked,

again, for the hug that was certainly a stand in for other arms:

I quaked and yielded. She did not want to know me,

but to know that someone would care enough to say:

I accept your fear with the same unreason that brings it.

No one wants to know what the other one is thinking,

just that for a minute’s time a faithful space is shared,

or hope is defined by a bit of community that will be

allowed to disappear, without a need for shedding tears.

Day 3: Woeful Wednesday

Here, KS

A colleague of mine's brother-in-law lives there,
all wrapped up in soft-spoken age & false teeth
letting slide the subtlest lies through a radio fourthwall.

Believable lies, willingly suspended, make his brand
of honesty so compelling. I believe in Irma,& Ted,
& even Jillian as much as any Chuck, Dave or Maryette.

But the state I live in is not all dotted with resolve, or
picked ripe as September's last acorn squash. Whatever
do they do with all those leftover pumpkins, anyhow?

See, here in our corner of a mislead & unheard populace,
we don't worry much about American exceptionality,
& sure as shit don't talk about settling our entitlements.

We just want to bring our children up to know the difference
between right & wrong is not often debated about on television.

I Dreamed I Was Saint Augustine

It is not the dreamer who longs for a heft of pain

to come & give life meaning or take it away.

It is not boredom either, but a breed of anxiety

born in doubt that desires that touch of disaster.

But the levees hold the flood.

The June rise was gone before July arrived.

It wasn’t sadness exactly, but a bit of secret disappointment

when the benches rose up out of the river once again.

Still, there are no ducks and no leftover bread.

Only driftwood birds bailing to the bridge

at that instinctual instant, the last,

though there is never really any danger.

It’s too early to still be sleeping. Wake.

The day will make its pain, or shake it.