Estate

 

The plan, of course, was to keep on living.

That’s why three jars of preserves

And two dozen medications and supplements 

Are part of the estate sale today.

The family album goes back

To 1881;

The rugs are from Persia;

The DVDs are eclectic.

Some things are tacky;

Others are frankly beautiful,

And everything is half-off today

Because next week is another sale,

Another home turned into a market

For indifferent strangers to wander through,

Some of them not far from their own estate sale,

And buying things, perhaps, to fill it out.

Land of Mist

 

On a foggy day,

The light comes from all over,

Soaked up in the humid air,

Permeating every living cell,

Catching the world in the amber of itself.

 

Some would call this day gloomy;

I see a landscape drenched in light,

Suspended in luminance, underwater,

Rescued from time, forgiven everything.

On the Best of Days

 

He could imagine a clean, bright, spacious mind,

As plain and pure as the white November sky,

Across which armies of well-marshaled thoughts

Paraded splendidly, in blameless glamor,

 

Instead of the higgledy-piggledy retreat

Of a ragtag, shrapnel-studded crew

That passes, on the average, workaday day

For a train of thought – a travesty of a mind.

 

He could even get there, for minutes at a stretch –

That place where everything is grist for the mill,

And the mill moves evenly, pushed by limpid water,

Never rushing or ceasing, grinding as fine as sand.

 

And why not all the time? He didn’t know.

There might be one or many thousand reasons.

He was, after all, a cracked, ungainly creature,

But his mind was infinite, at least on the best of days.

Canadian Haze

 

We had sunset all day 

Because of fires in Canada.

The smoke drifted south,

Making the light golden and soft.

 

One person’s danger

Is another’s beauty;

One country’s fire

Is another’s golden light.

In Praise of Mediocrity

 

It takes many long hours

Of practice and dedication,

The shame of not knowing,

The sacrifice of other joys

 

To become mediocre –

Which is to say, not bad.

How long were we bad?

Most of us, our whole lives.

 

In fact, most of us are not even bad.

I’m not a bad flautist,

Because I can’t play at all.

I don’t have bad Spanish, but close to no Spanish,

Even though I can order tacos

And thank the girl who brings them,

Who must be all of twelve

But is admirably professional.

 

So badness is an achievement,

And mediocre is better than that.

Mediocre is proficient,

Even passably deft,

And often good enough

To contribute to excellence;

In fact, nothing truly excellent

Can exist without it at all.

 

Is this why we spurn mediocrity?

Because we so often fall short of it?

Or do we think we’re too good

For all the steps in between?

 

No one achieves greatness

Without passing through mediocrity,

Which is a barren, thankless country,

Poorly signposted, filled with dead ends;

 

The wayside is littered

With the bodies of good people

Who died before reaching

The superb grace of that twelve-year-old girl.

Anthony

 

I once had my hair cut

By the oldest barber in the world.

The title I think was official.

He was a hundred and seven years old.

 

He didn’t own the barbershop.

He still drove himself to work.

It was easy to get an appointment;

You just asked for Anthony.

 

He was a little deaf,

But sharp as a tack.

He was full of plans for the future -

Things to invent when he had the time.

 

He died about two years later.

I only found out last year.

I had hoped he would cut my hair again,

But life gets busy,

And it’s a long way to New Windsor.

 

I’m not sure how he went exactly.

When you’re a hundred and nine

No one asks a lot of questions.

 

For him, it was all the blink of an eye.

He started cutting hair at seventeen;

When he stopped, he was dead.

His son, too, was an old man by then.

They might have passed for brothers;

At a certain point, how much older can you look?

 

It’s not a bad legacy -

Maybe a hundred thousand haircuts.

They had all grown out

By the funeral, of course -

But what lasts forever?

Nothing human, at least.

Found Poem (With Embellishment)

 

When Devin came down to Alabama

He walked around with kumquats in his pockets

Like a bad translation of Johnny Appleseed

Or a man whose need for sourness

Catches him unawares.

Memorial Day

 

We followed the parade

Out to the old cemetery

And sat under the trees

Or tanned in the late-May sun.

A grade-schooler recited the Gettysburg Address

In a monotone; a younger child asked

“Is this everyone in Connecticut?”

 

Dogs made anxious by the gun salute

Barked; old men wore their old uniforms again;

And someone read out the names of the honored dead

To people who - some of them -

Had the same last names.

 

The weather was perfect.

The children were in dresses, in good moods.

On the way out of the cemetery,

Joe’s older daughter had a thousand questions.

“Who was the first person to die?” she wondered,

And Joe said it may have been Adam or Eve,

But no one really knows for sure.

The People Who Think Power Is One Thing

 

The people who think power is one thing

Are wrong.

Calm is power, and so is play.

Money is nice, and fame would have its moments,

But some of the best things

Actually do come free.

 

And so much weakness

Dresses up like strength.

Ego is weakness, and the need to dominate;

Even a too-narrow view of the world is weakness -

The kind of view that makes a person think

 

That power is one thing,

Always and only power,

Forgetting about humor,

Lightness, kindness, gratitude, love.

Survival

 

Someone has left a dinosaur

On a yellow café table

Under the trees at the White Hart Inn

On a moody Sunday in May.

 

It might be an Ankylosaurus -

But to be fair, it might not.

I haven’t been a dinosaur expert

Since I was eight years old.

 

It has wheels instead of feet -

Because evolution is mysterious -

And a curious dignity

Extinction couldn’t touch.

 

And if its owner doesn’t come back for it

I think the dinosaur will be fine,

Because after the late Cretaceous

The White Hart is child’s play.

The Wisdom of Children

 

The wisdom of children

Is often misunderstood.

It’s not the wisdom of love

(Although children do love)

Or the wisdom of innocence

(Which is nothing like love at all).

Children are wise

When they’re throwing a tantrum,

As if the borrowed toy

Or the wrong-flavor ice cream

Were infinite tragedy,

Consuming all else –

A singularity of suffering,

A nexus of endless grief.

 

If this moment is the only moment,

Children are wise when they act that way,

Screaming or laughing,

Joyous or deranged,

Utterly swallowed

By the fleeting feeling of now.

 

In middle years we fill up with past and future,

Grudges and projects, injuries and dreams.

Like Marley’s chains they drag us, back and forward,

Bending our backs with the weight of the unreal.

 

And then the load lessens.

The horizon shrinks.

Our old wisdom comes back to us

In a new and calmer guise,

Tempered by a new gratitude

To be feeling anything at all.

 

Only the very old and the very young

Are wise.

They know there is nothing

Beyond this moment,

And their whole hearts are given to it,

Again, and again, and again.

Small Talk

 

She said she hated small talk,

Leaving me nowhere to start,

Because the journey of a thousand miles

Does not begin with hating steps.

One Moment

 

You sit warm in the sunshine,

Starting a new book,

As cars go about their business 

At either side of the green.

 

You have nowhere to be 

But where you are,

Nothing to do but sit warm in the sun,

Watching other lives weave past you,

Moved to tears by the world.

Storm Windows

 

The storm windows are coming off;

Another winter has been survived.

Screen out the bugs, but let in the warming air,

Even the coldish air of summer nights;

All this is grateful, is a part of comfort,

Because we don’t want to keep the world out;

We want to control the way we let it in –

To keep the breezes, but keep out the storms.

Being

 

You are a self-aware chemical reaction

In a stochastic universe

Having a conscious experience

For reasons no one understands.

 

In light of that,

Perhaps you can relax.

Perhaps today’s troubles

Are not so all-consuming.

 

Ask yourself,

What would a self-aware chemical reaction do?

It’s roughly what you’re doing -

But could you do it with more grace?

 

More of a sense of proportion,

More humor, more humanity?

Because when Sagan called us “chemical scum,”

He meant it as a compliment.

Rain

 

The rain is drumming on the drainpipe

Like a mad percussionist,

Making a sound of safety, shelter,

The swaddling ingenuity of man.

 

This is why we build houses:

For days like this, rains like this rain.

This house was built for the dead –

Generations of them;

Now the living live here,

At least for a time;

And when we pass onward,

Others will follow,

As long as it rains,

And this house keeps out the rain.

Color Theory

 

The delicate green of early spring

Is here today, tomorrow gone:

A color of passage, pushed aside

By richer, deeper summer hues;

 

And spring itself is more notion than season:

The simple idea of blossoming;

A carnival of vanishing color;

A lesson laid bare in unfolding pink.

Takeoff

 

Window-shaped lights

Dance around the cabin

As the sun draws loops

Off the tilting wing.

 

It’s a familiar sight,

Hardly worth noticing,

But surreal and lovely

If you happen to look up.

Gilding the Thistle (Tain)

 

Sun on Scotland

Is almost indecent -

Unveiling a new beauty,

Naked and shameless and pure.

 

It should be illegal,

And it mostly is,

But when a glimpse of sun

Is smuggled through,

 

Eden blushes;

Paradise pales;

Alba shines golden -

If only for an hour.

Enchanted Places

 

Well, you bring the enchantment with you.

What could be more obvious?

Whatever string inside of you

Is tuned for beauty or ethereal things

Hums like a maniac in certain places -

Unless it doesn’t, and you’re not sure why.

 

And sometimes it’s the opposite. You’re somewhere dull,

Familiar, uninspiring, drab -

The gas station on the corner, say - and there

You find yourself struck dumb with sudden bliss

(As arguably you should be every time).

 

It’s all of it together. It’s the place,

The time, the weather, and your passing mood.

You bring the enchantment with you, yes,

But then of course it’s helpful if the place

Offers a bit more than the average gas station,

Which, to the perfect instrument, might be enough.

The North Coast (Helmsdale)

 

The road follows the coast

Because that’s where the towns are,

Because fish and trade fed the people,

And still do to a small extent.

 

History is a desire path,

Always choosing the shortest distance,

As blind as the men who make her,

As wise as the all-knowing sea.

The Grey Cairns

 

It’s cold in the cairn – five-thousand-years cold;

As cold as history, as cold as death.

Outside, the birds are prophesying spring;

Inside, it’s quiet; you can see your breath.

 

Even the ghosts are old in such a place;

They speak in whispers, haunted by themselves.

Here is the relic of some ancient race:

A thousand heavens, and as many hells.

The Ghosts of Skye

 

Sheep are not as a rule majestic,

But when they loom up suddenly,

White in the headlights against a black night,

Close to the road on either side,

There’s something undeniably ghostly

In the way their calm eyes watch you pass.

My Phantom Wife

 

There’s always a cup laid out for her -

A pillow, a bathrobe, a mint;

Once there was even a hot-water bottle,

Which I thought was awfully nice.

 

There are two chairs at the breakfast table,

Two rocking chairs on the porch,

And there’s room on the bed for my open suitcase -

At least until she arrives.

 

The water is hot, the food is good;

The room has a view of the lake;

She’ll be made very welcome and comfortable here

If she and I ever meet.

Scottish Farewell

 

Sun and rain together

Coming down the Great Glen

Make it seem like Scotland

Is waving me goodbye.

Peatsmoke (St. Margaret’s Hope)

 

When you smell the peat, it could be any time -

The trackless ages of prehistory;

The early Christian days, when Patrick went

From slavery to sainthood in a blink;

 

You could be sitting round the gusting fire

With William Wallace or with Finn McCool,

Or scenting in the distance, rapturously,

The welcome hearth of Yeats, of Rabbie Burns;

 

In fact, it might even be today,

For all the difference in that noble smell;

You might have driven a long, weary way

Through the prosaic present, to arrive

 

Where burning moss carries the old soul back

To wallow in its ageless ancestry.