Drove by there the other day
    coyote crossed
        in front of me
    alive and running
            fast enough

My young cousin,
        brand new motorbike
    cross street in Berkeley 1:00 am
        Just going too
            damned fast

All these years of rough
    and tumble
        sitting in the garden like
     a child, hands in the dirt
        heart beating
            A little too fast

The crash was a macabre dance of slow-motion destruction.
Front loading washer on the delicate cycle.
Passengers tossed like a mixed salad in a fruit bowl
of limbs, papers, car debris and hair.

The soundtrack to my slow-motion sideshow is the
grinding of enameled metal on broken asphalt.
Gravel drag punctuated with the beat
of the pulsing turn signal.

I push the button and fall on my head
crumpled on the roof now floor of my car and
pour myself into the intersection.

I was talking and ran the stop sign.
Two passengers
birthed through the rear hatchback delivered into the world
glazed and wide eyed and
I am on my knees fishing through broken glass
hoping to not slice anything open
scrambling to retrieve my things before vultures descend.

Family arrives to pull me together.
Scotch tape and packing string.
My brother tries to calm me with teasing,
“So you turtled your car and the wheels are still spinning.”
My mother attends to the work:
police, insurance, hospital.

Check list of passengers:
I’m ok
Jeff’s ok
Amy needs an x-ray of her back
next stop
Greenville Memorial Hospital then home for all.

Saltines for dinner.
Turn up the furnace I’m cold.

In my red flannel sheets I hear the
moment of impact
I feel the
blow to the right rear stopping everything.
I hear
the silence.
I feel the car and see
the world turn in a slow motion circle.

Dark Cerulean blue streak left on the crossroad
in some neighborhood in Greenville South Carolina
as a remnant of my reckless ride with Ben and
he didn’t survive.

You chose your backpack for contour and
cobalt blue pulls and
it never touches the floor.

When we set up house
your closet is a reverent shrine to
brass hangers facing north
dutiful soldiers displaying your clothes
filed by color:
carnation, coral, crimson, violet, periwinkle.

My closet was full of higgledy-piggledy
shoes on shoes
pants that look like someone just walked out of them
shirts stacked on hooks and socks hanging
on the edge of my laundry basket.

Your dresser
has the discipline of t-shirt rectangles in the center drawer
and identical underwear arranged by age in descending order.

I could not get enough of you
like the time I couldn’t satiate my desire for
the permanence of phthalocyanine blue on my canvases
or the honey-colored underglaze double layered on my
bisque-fired terracotta.

You held me and filled my obsession
until your compulsion
possessed you and took you
tunnel visioned towards
beige Chris
a single note
with colorless charm.

It ended in Hadley.

He’d be leaving, lightly loaded, on the bus.

Two items still to part with:

1. A car with bad breaks, significant steering problems, and bald tires.
2. That poem that ran much longer than Poe would ever allow. Epic. Five hundred pages of it.

It was the last of his stuff.

After that garage sale and several trips to the dumpster.

A potential buyer was now here for the car. He had a sports coat on.

“I’m asking five hundred,” he advised the man. “It runs, still. But . . . be careful about stopping. That’s . . . rather risky.” He explained about a few dangers involved in that. He didn’t tell him everything. Not everything about the car.

“How much?”

“I was thinking five hundred.”

“You’re kidding. I’ll give you twenty-five.”

“Come on now.”

“That’s better than nothing, isn’t it?”

“That’s almost nothing,” he said.

“Look, I’m doing you a favor. I’m giving it a good home. Huh?”

“Yeah? Then take this too,” he said, and he shoved his sheaf of epic poetry at the man, which filled a whole ream of Georgia Pacific paper.

“What’s this?”

“It’s unpublishable. That’s what it is.”

“What?”

“I’m traveling light.”

“What would I do with a thing like this?”

“What do you do with anything?”

The man smirked. “Recycle it?”

“Look,” he said. “Whatever you do, don’t take my car to the junkyard. It’s served me well. It was good in the beginning, really good, and it’s still got some miles on it. Fix a few things, and it’ll still hum. You can put life into anything if you try.”

“That so?” said the man. “Then why don’t you do it?”

“Me? I’m done with it. I need a new start.”

The man was looking at the work of poetry, fanning pages. “What’s this thing about?”

“Nothing really.”

“It’s a lot of nothing.”

“Life. It’s about life. My life. But I’m tired of it.”

“Your life?”

“No, no. That poem.”

“This is one poem?” The man was fanning pages. He was near the end.

“That’s right.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know about this.”

“I’m done with trying. You know what I mean?”

“Sure. Everybody’s done with that. Now and then, I mean. I suppose I could stick it somewhere. I have no idea where. But if it’s about you, well, that makes me feel a bit odd.”

“Whatever you do, just don’t burn it.”

The man grew red in the face. “Look here. I’m not taking responsibility for a thing like this. And you can keep the damned car too.” He shoved the poetry back at him.

He watched the man get in his car and take off.

He guessed he’d have to take the car to the junkyard.

But what about the poem? He had no idea where that was going. He felt like leaving it in the car. But then he thought of both of them out there, car and poem, in the weeds, surrounded by all that rusting metal and broken glass.

It was just too long, he remonstrated with himself. Poe was right. No poem should be that long. But then he wanted to pack so much into it, his entire self. His whole life’s journey. And what was wrong with that?

The window breathes in
and breathes
out the inside air
and the outside
air together
and it scatters the light

a burst of orange
mosaic butterfly wing
diffuses sunlight
flutters on an exhalation
from an indoor exultation.

Another window shrivels
with wood rot
sealed shut
tight as a canning jar
part of the frame
dissociated listing
at a 45° angle.

Beware the window
with heavy opulent
drapes painted
in still-life brocade
peaches and plums
unmoved in a gust
of wind blocking
the spell of the
full moon
stifling inspiration
wildness
muffling the melody
that wants to ride inside
on the wind
and back out
on the wings of a song.

Neither heard
nor unheard
neither framed nor unframed
I sing the unbounded joy
pulsating in the
expanding universe.

flash of goldfinch
beneath pale memory,
moon yellow butterfly
zig-zag flight
hardly less than vivid,
a crow barks—squalling orders overhead
below small aircraft motor
bothering the silence.

relentless squabble brothers
fight again next door,
train whistle commentary
passage along the silent Sound,
steel-wheel-motion-clamor,
compounded by echoes &
muffle clouds’ puff-delay.

neighbor chickens cackle,
free ranging one yard away,
bird call broadcast drifting sideways
into view, busy jibber-jabber talk,
tweeting more nonsense, more newsfeed

now let’s unpack that statement

(let’s not)

the birds’ chirp circus ministry
is more astute, more adaptable
to the swaying away of morning,
perfume breeze of fecund flower bush
and lone sparrow winging-up puddle dust—
YES, little pigpen!
joy-art
of dirt-bathing in the driveway.