On the Way Down
The final leaf to flutter
in a snow fall…

is forgotten.

It loses its distinction

in the slow change of seasons,
in the lonely silent landing

and blank accumulation.

The same…

the same is oblivion.

Wreckage
February 23, 2022

It nearly came to pass, the acceptance—

that conflict is unavoidable,
that I am worthy of your sacrifice,
that my personal growth trumps all the fuss.

Thus have I tried to justify the wreckage
that piles around me in my middle age.

I’ve been too ready to believe in
the inevitability of pain,
mine, also yours, blaming our limits
on a calculus: how one sets the rate
of change for the rest…

…such small and shrinking
forevers, the hours sifting like sand
through the bottleneck, options draining away.

Today, my heart is broken for my children
who will have to reckon with my specter

as I mourn my father who set the terms
for what has come later. Yahweh-yireh.

You will say there is no comparison
but it’s easier to see the problem
from this distance, from the safe remove
of a writer in his basement, sheltered
at his desk…even this distance from myself.

I make excuses.

Love is not the same
as power. We must be judged by our
peaceful intentions. I am a man of
conviction.

But I watch what happens today
to time, the compression, how the value
of the moment changes, and remember

the many ways that I have closed off
the future for myself, for everyone.

This is a day for learning hard lessons.

Self-Portrait
You and I were strolling past
a long row of pictures and halted
together—not for the first or last
time; this happened often—
when our attention seized the same
detail and for the same reason,
stunned by the same choice of color.

Do you recall a small drip of red
on his fur-lined lapel and another
on the bulb of his bawdy nose?
Rembrandt van Rijn, posing
for his portrait in later middle-age,
a man of solid reputation but
wearying of lust and dissipation?

Do you remember the one I mean?
On a wall somewhere in Boston?
New York?  Washington, D.C.?

An expression of reckless passion?
A sorcery of extra strokes when
the delicate work was done
and the master was alone, after
his apprentice had gone home
and there was no one to stop him
from risking his creation, no one
to stay his hand or quiet his desire
for two perfect drops of crimson?

Counterfactual
You would have chosen the chapel
with the rose window, as I did
during the hour of sulfur and stone,
although another chose to sleep
until the dusk had tamed the day.

You would have searched for a darkness
cooled by dim light, a humid rain
of pink and purple to dapple
the altar, the spirit clinging
to mildew in damp plaster.

You would have listened for blind bees
bumping in the rafters, the sun
tapping the roof, and from the corner
the lucent song of a spider
dancing along her silken cross.

You would have savored the incense
offered by priests who could not rest
while the fields simmered and the valley
below the vineyard bled red poppies
praying to their own god of love.

And we would have knelt together,
twining our roots through limestone,
honing ourselves to face the hour
of summer fire, then fade like flowers
exposed too long to empty sky.