On the rooftops of Kyiv we master
the circle dance, the feel of wood
that can still support our weight.
Mom used to warn me that too much of anything
—piety, vegetables, even reading—can be harmful.
But growing up, I brushed my teeth irregularly
at best. In the chaotic mornings, no one had time…
Often, as the day’s doleful hours grow too heavy
and I long to set side my many cares,
I think of my dog in his bed, how he has no funerals…
A poem must be as short as the poet’s life
or millennia longer: there is no in-between.
Either it dies with you or lives on, this strife,
and if you conclude I’m given to extremes
Keep poetry simple, like
a single ant atop a blueberry,
catching the light without shining.
In times like these
I clean the gutters monthly
and the lint trap every day;
buy a time-share in the
Ojai Public Library, invest my life
savings in the Ventura Arboretum;
This is a time for bravery.
Not the human-cannonball kind.
Not the free-diver nor the free-soloist.
At the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater the Milky Way is rewound,
fast-forwarded, collided with nearby galaxies, as though nearby made
any sense in this unreal landscape, both alien and, in moments of insight,
Stare out a window, any window, until your eyeballs loosen
and you spoon them out of your skull like two warm eggs.
Be sure to keep at least one nerve and one blood vessel
attached to the bowl of pudding that rests on your spine.
That one could read a poet’s collected works
in a single sitting.
That barely a handful are worth reading again.