The long while

The long while has much silence as words.
A married woman arrives on the front door.
She holds a picnic basket.
She has eyes that say 
"Do not ask anymore, I am here."

And all the long while I wonder
What prompts a man to open a door, 
Let her come in. 
Or yet, closes the door behind him
As he joins her elsewhere.

Winds blow and leaves

A document arrived this morning.
I was on my way out, I decided to leave 
the large envelope in the living room.
I was supposed to have a daylight-day:
somewhere off the desk, 
a table outdoors finally. With a book
to mean nothing else but joy.
Shoes without socks, ripped jeans, an apple.
But something else always happens, the way
things, unexpected, do.
I returned the book unread,
the apple without a bite. I returned
hungry and angry

receiving another unhappy news.
When will things go away? I want to go away.
But the winds blow and leaves 
stay on the branches.

i started a joke

I should be a little too old for this.
But

in the mornings I still have my tea,
the toast, slices of a piece or two
of fruit

as though nothing has changed.
The weather 
has been kind of late, two days now.

It tells me to come for a run or what
may resemble like it.
I try not to think of a woman 

filling my recent days, with whom
words are exchanged
like gifts.

To each other as though we are young
again, somehow. In a way.
I am a little too old and she is 

a little older than I am; but also, 
married. Isn't it quite an old joke?

I think about meeting you

I think about meeting you 
in spring when the forsythias are in bloom
and on the twigs of trees are flowers
and the days are lovely,
the nights are cool.
It would be like we are young again
believing there may be worries 
but nothing could stop us from loving.
And then we would extend the hours
into a one long inexhaustible conversation
as though a movie.
As though a movie.

forty-so degrees

The temperature still has its cool hand
pressed flat against the surface of air.
Though the sun is bright
and gusts come not infrequently.
Dog walkers are out, their dogs patient
with the slow stroll; more lovers
are out nights. Their soft warm glow. 

I work continuously for days now,
trudging 
over translations and retranslations,
that the sun also keeps longer hours.
Outside the large windows, there may be
no indication of evening, not even 
when sometimes I feel my palms cold.

There is an end, though not in sight.
There will be summer, though not yet.
At the moment, here, 
forsythias in bloom.

A poem for you

Photo by WV Mozer

Time for rowing 
and fishing.
A bear alone
but not quite 
in the distance.
The sense
of quiet.
Though nothing
truly is.

the wall is thin

At the conference this morning, an independent researcher
reads her paper about nostalgia and peoples in transit.
She says "doors" to answer in an ambiguous way a question
from the audience; she describes as doors the door 
of airplanes that, like magic, one comes through to places;
also the screen of phones like doors.
My friend J- is having a depression and is remembering
all the people who used to read poetry with him; they are 
all either dead or have gone away. He repeatedly says

come over the house for dinner, but that last time his wife
casually says "I have no friends", repeating it as she leans 
on the doorframe. It troubles me to this day.
What can a person say to someone well past his fifties
with two children not yet even of school age? There are
children in the news feeds, children from far away, dying.
The graduate student who, during consultation, repeatedly

say how she did her work she did her work she did 
her best, her work
was truly only navel gazing 
at her own miseries. Sometimes it angers me

but only because I have been to countries of bone dry misery.
Where people do not have rooms for pathologized miseries, 
caught as they were in systemic and vicious precarity.
It troubles me to this day, how I cannot say
stop it

because I have no right to; because I, too, am flawed with
my own miseries, trifling in the larger scheme of things.
What can I say that will be of interest to you?
When I come home and open the door and see you, beautiful 
calves, legs stretched comfortably while your feet rest 
on the table after a long day at work, your attention now 
on a book, your long braided hair, what is there to say?

I hope there will be no need of words. I will 
fall on the space beside you, a door, a sigh,
so at last there will be no need of words.