February is like a phantom
Passing swiftly through the door.
It’s the soul-month of the year,
The snowdrop, the little month.
Love whom you love
With all the love you have
For time will not wait.
None of us are going home.
You won’t keep your name,
It’ll burn out like a flame.
Even the lamb that strayed
Will be found to be splayed.
Passengers on a ship of fools,
It’s for you I come to shrive.
February is like a ghost,
It glides across the floor.
What is any of it about?
You and I are all we have.
Happy birthday February!
From Imbolc soars a silver ball,
And then that will be all.

My first reckoning with amazement,
One of my grandfather’s rain barrels
Overgrown with blue and white morning glories,
Rooted to the green height of summer.
A blossoming barrel, a flowering topiary,
Like a sleeping bear covered by sun petals,
Breathing and alive in a deeper life,
With rainwater rainbows and interlaced light,
With climbing, winding, twining vines,
Growing even from the barrel’s cavity,
Flowing up, out, and over,
Also floating on the waters at the rim.
A tropical boscage, soft to every sense,
A magical flowering of vision
For a child steeped in creation’s dream,
Alive in the stillness of discovery,
With hummingbirds, a half-dozen bright,
Arriving to lift the barrel into light.

Happy Birthday to my father,
Though he’s been gone so long
I think of him every day,
And wish that he were here.
I wish he’d met my children,
And seen the man I’d grown to be.
No doubt I’d be more patient.
No doubt he’d have forgiven me.

I saw a falcon today—a merlin
Rare I think
Too fast to turn and look again
A flash it was
Like an arrow on fire
With a magician’s name
And hunger’s aim
Look out pigeons
Look out waxwings
They attack from below
And profit from confusion
With rapid wings
And falcon speed
They climb for the skylarks
And bring down the moon

Where was my son running with the ball?
Was it the ball he carried
That compelled him to run?
Did the ball say, “over here,” and “over here”
And off went my son
Cradling the flight in his hands.
Before he learned to throw, catch, bounce,
Or kick the ball,
It made him run, as if he were the son of all spheres,
Son of the air and sun.

Growing older
The colder the bones
Of my knees and shoulders
The stonier my feet
And my boots in retreat
The icier my spine
Ever sharper the incline
So it feels that in ageing
I’ve been climbing
Mount Everest
And losing my zest
Lay down to rest
Fixed to the summit
Green Boots at last

It’s raining and there’s no sky.
It’s snowing without crystal.
There’s a river without an eye.
There’s a place without stigma.

There are bodies without organs.
There are dogs without sight.
There’s a path through a woodlot
But it’s overgrown with rot.

There are conditions without hope
And wars without appeasement.
There’s a place without race
And of the pain we inflict, not a trace.

There are feelings without feeling
And living without being.
There are memories without shape
And shadows that escape.

It’s snowing and there’s no sky.
It’s raining into an open eye.
There’s a place without stigma.
There’s a river turned to crystal.

We were looking at an old art deco building
In the city of our youth
Both of us stoned on some excellent reefer
When my friend said “that building is holy”
Soon as he said it it happened
I saw the Metropolitan Building
Floating above its own foundation
Backlit by the summer moon
Glowing with nimbus light
And for a few moments it was holy
It was everything we’d ever loved
The years of our poetic friendship
Our city its streets its river of time
They all belonged to us
Without a police cruiser in sight

Every December I reread Kenneth Patchen
His poems are like Christmas lights
On impoverished streets
I remember buying a signed edition
In a Las Vegas bookshop
I think it should have cost more
But so should roses and sunsets
My heart goes out to Kenneth Patchen
His broken back and silent anguish
His poems mused me into meditation
Fused me into the flowering of forever
How many of his poems
Were like gifts we opened at Christmas
When as children we could receive
Why is it every time I read Patchen
I’m awash in grief and gratitude
It’s like the resurrection of something
Comfort has lost in us an avowal
About our duality and ambivalence
How we love and hate
How we end our wars with tears of joy

How strange to see a bottle of Crown Royal
Reflected in a barbershop mirror.
A customer asked my father to save it
Until after a business meeting.
He died/ in a car wreck, minutes later.
I know dad went/ to the funeral
And told the widow about the bottle.
She said “why don’t you keep it, Frank,
My husband would have liked that.”
Once, when we suggested opening it,
Dad refused saying it didn’t belong to us,
It belonged to a man who was dead.
Ownership existing beyond the grave.
My father’s honesty was beyond reason,
What comes from experiencing war
When everyone’s everything is betrayed.
That’s why it’s not strange for me
To see a bottle of Crown Royal
Reflected in a barbershop mirror.
I know who placed it there and why it stays.