Sitting out back in the smell of the
Mud, on a May night where it was
Rain in the air all day, but none on the ground,
The kind of night of a day that kills the grass
Because the rain that falls all winter has left the ground
And now it’s dry and getting hot, even late
At night, I remember I live in a swamp,
In a state near a bay that’s near an ocean,
In the air which smells of mud and dying grass,
And know the real story, that only one I’ll know
Is this one about my life in
The man who sits outside and thinks about ground
And grass and swamps and oceans, the
Of a couple of beers and staying up too late
And thoughts of the people I know
In a combination of people and thoughts only I know.
I sit and lean my head over the deck and let my eyes
Go slack and blur and I stare into the trees
Of the house down below ours on this hill,
My eyes don’t cross but they lose focus and it swims
Together, the heavy branches of the trees on the hill
And the lights of the house below us, the lights swim
Through the black cloud the dark green trees
Make when they swim together, in my eyes
The lights below us become like stars, the pattern of two lights
Is like the start of an earthly constellation only
I will ever know, and I tilt up my head for good luck
Back at the sky which is thick with clouds but city-lit,
And salmon-pink colored, but so thick no stars light.
And it seems that only I have known misfortune in this world,
The pains and the mis-steps and the blown shit
That would bring a person outside on a damp cloudy night,
And in sadness I think up and down my time zone
About my
loved ones in
In a little gap between a chain of mountains
In a tiny town where you don’t talk much except about
What happened in town, which ain’t much,
So you don’t
talk much, and on up into
Which seems to thrive on
And about
Much in terms of living, all the street shit
You put up with, all the voices and details and the shit
That goes along with making ends meet there so there’s some living.
Below me somewhere like a coral, the blossom
Of a peony hangs so heavy it scares off the birds.
One who kept its distance all day, a cardinal,
Weeps sadly from across the street for all it will never know.
My wife like an inventor will see out the window
The flower and the riot of its petals, and it will not be alone
When she brings it inside, she will bridge the distance
I find impossible, between sitting, seeing, thinking to know
And the haughty bowl of wine in air the blossoms
Will make upon the fireplace, teeming further in the window
So that the pink and white reflection in the glass stops birds.
And who am I to go on like this alone,
The words and what they make, lined up and folded, the distance
Between a blossom from my night outside, and here, in her heart?