Vow

No one needs to reach me
For the rest of the day.
I know when the sun sets.
I know when the mail comes.

I’m done with work for now.
There’s no news in this town.
I can lay the links down.
No one needs to reach me.

At dusk, I’ll feed the cat,
And then I’ll check my watch
Once, the end of the day.
And then I’ll go to bed.

Where You Start and Where You Are Right Now

Are they not the same?
Or are they two points
You use to plot out
How far you’ve come, how
Much turf you call yours?

There are maths for that,
But not for this—songs
(They’re not, or not yours,
Not us, what yours are,
But let’s call them that)

Burst out from the pines,
And the beats of beaks
Drill on the thick bark,
And lives call out harsh
Rough calls to warn off

Or to lure in mates,
And it’s spring up here,
And full of fresh sap
For now, in a drought,
Yes, but not dry yet.

For now, time to shout
And run in the sun
And stock up and move
On, since you’re life, since
Life lives, lives on life.

Down in the fast towns,
A spring day’s not much
More than a work day—
Folks these days just choose
Which days are for free

Play—it takes a storm
Or a fire, a plague
To wake up the towns
To the fact they’re made
For and full of lives.

But up here, your lives
Hid in dirt and trees,
In roots and in caves,
Treat this as a day
To get big, to race

The sun. The bones don’t
Know a great drought’s on;
The genes were well-mixed
By the wet years, dry
Years, ice-cold years, hot.

This day feels like spring,
And you’ll act like it.
There’s time but no space
To start in where you
Are, no maths for that.

The Flesh in Front of the Words

The same scene—a beast,
Flesh, one, sits in front
Of a wall of books
As if to say, This
Is me, me and mine.

One beast. Lots of books,
Lots more words in those.
Who is whose, in truth?
And why the one framed,
Flesh to face the lens,

As if to say, I
Am the lord, and these
Are my serfs. I own,
I know all the words
In them. What a joke,

I say, one of those
Who has held that pose,
Peered through that lens, owned.
We say, as those owned,
All the words in mind,

Who are much more than
The one beast who owns,
Who wait in the shelves
For the next and next,
Once each corpse gets gone.

Small Bets on a Slim Chance for a Big Win

Poems are like that. Big tales
Are big bets on a slim
Chance for huge wins, at least

Huge in the bank, in fame
In your life. Poems are small
Bets, scratch-offs. Some of us

Who would not buy scratch-offs
In real, cash life write poems
And just poems. Why? Why not

Write great, long tales like most
Would-be big-break fools who
Write tend to try? The poems

Don’t know, no more than do
The scraps of scratch-offs dropped
In the trash. Loss gets lost.