We always expected 
that in two short weeks 
a whole year could unwind 

so that we were left surprised
and still tell stories
of when on the sailboat 

your voice broke furious
through the wind
as we stumbled over the bow,

and we all sat then at dinner
frightened, exhausted 
trying to find our humor.

Miniature umbrella shadows face,
you shivered on the field
some time in the fuzzy past
 
and are shuffled together now 
in a pile on my desk,
Rhyme, reason vanished,

and irrelevant, since one moment later 
you may have been transformed 
by lightening or thunder or life.

Yet we drag around our past
in an every-lengthening caboose, 
forever needling through
our hopes for today.

What is the method for unleashing the old cars,
for choosing instead 
to watch each moment flicker past

unrelated, with no repeated story 
holding me down?
Let you go your way
and I mine?

How to amble across
wide swaths of earth
with an ever-willing thrill,

how to spew spores of joy
every time someone tried to uproot you,

how to settle into a problem
long after everyone else has walked away,

how to blossom best on rainy days,

how to feast on tiny bits 
no one else could endure,

how to survive in air, sea, 
mountain, tundra,

how to master each pretension,
meant to hem you in.

six cats
eight hands
so we measure

twelve feet
the length of our lives
and all things we collect

The storm has blown through
after rolling over us for two days. 
It has left a soft bitterness 
to be savored tenderly 
and then released
as we can. 

I witness a tree unleaf
and my heart is softened 
knowing it will releaf next spring.

But there is no softening 
watching you unleaf,
no such imagined spring 
to keep me company
in the heart of winter,

no such certainty in time frame,
no such pattern in your fall,
no part a burden to share
even with you
in this loneliest time.