Under My Umbrella
Hunkering under my umbrella
while the sky wrings itself dry
I feel absent of body, not mind.
My step is mechanical, and moves
along a virtual assembly line.
Parts grind, gnash, hum and skip
a beat or two. The houses
I pass look curious as cats.
Their windows open onto souls
drinking coffee, reading the news
on the family laptop, or dreaming
of a thrilling moment of incest
that luckily will never happen.
Yet the shock transmits to me
and ugly knotted pictures form.
I don’t want to see so I tip
the umbrella and spritz myself
with the purest natural solvent.
Why would I attribute horrors
to neighbors who’ve done no harm
even in the collective dark?
The shade my umbrella casts
shelters many species of thought,
a few possibly fatal to peace
of mind. The sky is almost done
with itself. I fold the umbrella
and allow myself to clarify
in the cloudy but purified light.
Musical Treetops
Sounds of trumpets and tubas
in the pines this morning:
the collective effect mocks
the jazz to which I aspired
with a crude touch on the piano.
I was a lean but fragile
adolescent. I drove myself
to the nether parts of the city
to listen to instruments tune up
and watch musicians turn on
with spikes of luxury drugs.
They never concealed themselves
from this pale, attenuated boy
peering through opaque glasses
and listening with opaque mind.
Now the brass raves in treetops
and pianos are digital keyboards
that moan like windy ghosts.
The drummers marched away,
abandoning their kits in the street.
Alto mates with tenor sax
and jazz still streams in the ether
though no one hears it cohere
in coughing fits of cigarettes
and splashes of unruly bourbon.
I stay home these days, the clubs
closed forever and the big streets
panting with tuneless anger.
The pines play adequate music,
from which I can still learn to live.
Valley Mist
Dream-worlds tied in bundles
like so many dead, dry sticks,
fuel to burn myself at the stake.
Some would call them fasces,
but I’m not engaged in politics
on this shaggy wet morning.
I press myself against myself
and an ooze of excess fluids
stains my last expensive shirt.
The mist rising from the valley
cloaks my backyard in the grace
no one either earns or refuses.
I should march down to the rally
and take a side and placard it
and pump myself full of virtue.
The horizon folds over itself,
expecting gray shadows of rain.
Standing by the roadside holding
a sign reading “No Kings Today”
I’ll risk weather for a precept
schoolchildren already know.
But that will happen at midday
when my dislike of politics fades
and the valley mist clears for
a brevity of fellowship,
passing cars honking thumbs-up,
a few rough shouts of derision.
Low Spots
The obtuse slope of this village
tips us into the low spots
where we slog through aster
and goldenrod, picking up ticks
bearing wretched brown disease.
We can’t walk on pavement because
the realtors claim the frontage
and lawyers parade in gray suits
working people can’t afford,
even for Sunday best when
the Episcopal church yawns
and accepts their meager offerings.
The low spots border a river
that snores with modest current.
Sometimes we fish for bluegills
and fry them as tasty white slabs
dusted with cornmeal and washed down
with the cheapest supermarket beer.
We allow ourselves to climb
from the muck to the library
where the death of literacy
prevails in rusty shades of black.
As we paw through old magazines
the river mud exudes the ghosts
of our dead high-school comrades,
their faces like those of the small fry
caught swimming against the flow.