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For thirty years,
my friend Evelyn
had the habit of
leaving the lamp post lit
in her front yard
and her garage door
open
all evening
as if to say,
I might drive out
on an errand or adventure
at any moment.
As if to say,
as a friendly reminder,
Here I am.

In Evelyn’s house
after her funeral
her grown children
left one lamp lit
and drove away

Mornings before dawn,
I see it from my kitchen window
as I stir my coffee

Today I want to write a poem
about wisdom
about not overworking
about remembering balance
and breath
about not pushing one more
task into every overflowing day

I got up extra early
to write this poem
about being gentle with
my self, giving over room
to wander through the hours
with empty hands and no list.

I love that poem I was going
to write this morning, while
sipping that second cup of coffee
But that’s not the poem I wrote.
Maybe later. I don’t have time
to write right now

is it lost by lack of practice
skill slipping away, inattention
till you can no longer–what?
ride a bike,
flip a pancake?

No. now that I’ve had quiet hours–
so many quiet hours–to think it over,
It is closest to skipping flat stones
across still water–you find the right stone–
and let it go
just so–
you don’t remember that you know
how to do this
but your body remembers and
there goes that stone
again and again and again
till it quiets and sinks beneath the surface
just so, you used to fall asleep

all night, half melted
icicles crash
falling
from the roofline

in the morning,
one small gray feather, stuck,
frozen to the gray sidewalk
still moves in imitation
of what it was
meant for–flutters
in the wind

Forty inches of snow
kept everyone in Binghamton
home. Most of them took pictures

White in the air, on the ground, on
cars and porches, road signs, rooflines.
You had to be there.
Snowstorms are
not photogenic.
But I love how we try anyway,
try to show each other
things so huge they’re hard to picture.
forty inches of snow, blue whales,
distances between stars–
We line up examples for scale.
What would we do without
elephants?

Dear Sir,
I saved your voicemail
so I can savor later
the way you say
Snow
Day

You forget.
Today it’s a name–
the man from Manhattan
who traded the city
for quiet hills and
a big farmhouse,
another thing that
used to be
yours.
You send a card anyway.
Life’s a gamble, you say.

when we finally arrive,
every last one of us
bone-weary, at best
the first decision is
where to work. What part of
home do you give over?
What jigsaw puzzle piece of
your life becomes your work?

This time around, wiser if not smarter,
I let kindness choose. This time, not the
practical space of enormous table
in the mid-day cold of the poorly-insulated kitchen

This time I choose the thrift store table
in the living room, table I hauled home
and on a summer day
painted the table-top sweet blue
and the mismatched base jaunty yellow
now I position it by the windows and begin

Here’s another one
Beginning in the dark after
Not enough sleep worrying
Worry worry endless loops of worry
Until the letters lose all meaning
Wroryworryorwyrworryworryworry

And then sunrise on frost-covered hills
turns the trees soft pink. And then someone makes
you laugh. And then a surly teenager unsurls
and grins, says, I have never been as excited
about a book as this one. And then another
one, this one an amateur annoyer, says,
Have you read this? I stayed up till 2 a.m. to
finish and now I need to find somebody
who read it too. I need to talk about this
book.
And this, this is all before lunch.

Read this poem
is an instruction
you can only
follow
if a poem
makes itself available
that is, offers itself up
in answer to your scramble
to do as you’re told
offers itself up like
a last minute date offers
itself up
to be read