How one old tire leans up against

      another, the breath gone out of both.

      Old friend,

      perhaps we work too hard

      at being remembered.

      Which way will the creek

      run when time ends?

      Don’t ask me until

      this wine bottle is empty.

      While my bowl is still half full,

      you can eat out of it too,

      and when it is empty,

      just bury it out in the flowers.

      All those years

      I had in my pocket.

      I spent them,

      nickel-and-dime.

      Each clock tick falls

      like a raindrop,

      right through the floor

      as if it were nothing.

      In the morning light,

      the doorknob, cold with dew.

      The Pilot razor-point pen is my

      compass, watch, and soul chaser.

      Thousands of miles of black squiggles.

      Under the storyteller’s hat

      are many heads, all troubled.

      At dawn, a rabbit stretches tall

      to eat the red asparagus berries.

      The big fat garter snake

      emerged from the gas-stove burner

      where she had coiled around the pilot light

      for warmth on a cold night.

      Straining on the toilet

      we learn how

      the lightning bug feels.

      For sixty-three years I’ve ground myself

      within this karmic mortar. Yesterday I washed

      it out and put it high on the pantry shelf.

      All I want to be

      is a thousand blackbirds

      bursting from a tree,

      seeding the sky.

      Republicans think that all over the world

      darker-skinned people are having more fun

      than they are. It’s largely true.

      Faucet dripping into a pan,

      dog lapping water,

      the same sweet music.

      The nuthatch is in business

      on the tree trunk,

      fortunes up and down.

      Oh what dew

      these mortals be.

      Dawn to dark.

      One long breath.

      The wit of the corpse

      is lost on the lid of the coffin.

      A book on the arm of my chair

      and the morning before me.

      Everyone thought I’d die

      in my twenties, thirties, forties, fifties.

      This can’t go on forever.

      There are mornings

      when everything brims with promise,

      even my empty cup.

      Two squirrels fight

      to near death,

      red blood flecking green grass,

      while chipmunks continue feeding.

      What pleasure: a new straw hat

      with a green brim to look through!

      Rowing across the lake

      all the dragonflies are screwing.

      Stop it. It’s Sunday.

      Throw out the anchor

      unattached to a rope.

      Heart lifts as it sinks.

      Out of my mind at last.

      On every topographic map,

      the fingerprints of God.

      When we were very poor one spring

      I fished a snowy river and caught