ethic

the old year was like a miraculous influence of rivers, a teeming delta. we started the year prior as married with a child. then, all the paperwork in the world, househunting, foolish social contracts. statistics: we ended up as four dogs, six men, a handful of lesser animals. and now they've all washed out to sea, and what's left is a little stream winding through a wide canyon, hugging the shoreline. all the dogs and mothers and goodwill recycled. we have the whole big house to ourselves. the basement is now an invisible theater of the absurd, my imagination playing all the parts of a ghost caligula, a garden party, an endgame, a peaceable kingdom...about my inner resources i can only quote my hero tennessee williams--when so many people are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be impossibly selfish to be lonely alone. in the spring, maybe we really will make our underground into a performance space. we'll take one more chance at growing a garden. we'll watch jack grow like a stalk, reaching for the daymoon.

and now, a valedictory poem for my mother:

sun takes a red

maple switch

to the backside

of the sky

for the sake of it

i wake up

to shovel a path

through an endless scene

of snow

homeward

over the highways

for my lame little

marine animal

grown old and breathing

through her back

she’s gone

and the sea is

empty

my favorite thing now

is to dwell

besìde a thing

my brainy and bodily

fluids

all askew

i do

what it takes

to get by

tell myself

what i have to

to keep going