What I Didn’t Understand
Was that everything that you
don’t make proliferates. Foolhardy
to expect the fern to stay put,
not fill in every inch that’s not
full sun. The planter boxes
are brimming with unsprouted seeds.
The morning glory with its trumpets
of light means deadly business.
The dog you love both loves
and hates that rag toy he won’t stop
shaking to death, returning to you
to throw it back to life. The fisherman
walked so slowly across the pier
on knees loose with pain. He dropped
the sheepshead he held by the neck
so he wouldn’t catch it again.
How the slack fish floated there
in stilled waters, belly big with
the gasping of alien air, its only
motion the fluttering of bloody,
exhausted gills. He must have swum
or sunk, because by the time you
got back from walking, he was gone.
The Truth About December
is that it’s just before January,
which means soon February will come,
then March, and then spring.
Grades are in, and we gather to pause,
be still, attend things we long ignored,
mend. Dazed by sudden snow, wet flakes melt
in puddles on the steps, on grass still green.
I’ll go out back to see what’s become
of the garden; young onions a sere and riotous
tangle, fennel, bowing low, still harbors
chrysalids who also wait for sun and rain.
The month of last things. Fall almost spent,
rest then, and wait for inclemency,
the order of ice, an intermission
of enforced calm where one might hear oneself,
that stalwart companion who stays silent
in the rush and press, the crowded voices,
the remonstrance and the uproar of what.
December’s agnostic interval—leaves
in crisp heaps, snarls of brush soon beveled
by the coverlet of snow that hides our next life.
