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
