Once I listened
to some good advice
beside a swimming hole in Vermont.
My soaking blue jeans
lost their spartan sparkle as
Pat O’Malley’s face glistened
like Athena’s.
On the spot
I changed into her boyfriend’s overalls
and a Mexican peasant shirt
as dry as Baja,
because I knew she loved us both.
Celebrate today
our steaming cyclist’s journey,
life’s complications,
and simple egress from teeming thickets
of all that is in the way.
Have you walked alone
in the rain in June,
bike on your shoulder
both tires flat,
and been glad of no-traffic
on the rutty old road,
of no supper-to-get-cold
of no friends on-the-other-end
to worry-where-is-he
or eat-without-you
and call you “late?”
Mind Is Amazement.
Monday Is Anticlimax.
Milking It Always.
O table saw!
I can’t give you away it seems.
Since we grew to be such friends
under a blue tarp last September,
cutting custom
jambs
for the ones I kicked out,
your dusty blade keeps returning.
I thought I’d made
a present of you.
Now I’m pleased to find
two of your kin in the entry hall
waiting for the next
season of cutting things
up, of starting hungry teeth
to do their whirling work,
incorporated in my hands.
Troy dives for my crotch.
Black Zeta bogarts Sponge Bob.
Alpha-male Yeager
is away at a show.
Radiators hiss.
Black Zeta growls in her sleep.
The old furnace roars.
My brother William takes down
the paper Bayeux Tapestry
draped along the beige walls
of our quality inn,
carefully folding the lame rendition
of colored woolen yarns.
Too much entropy
he said.
Outside, the frosty rail-cut
trembles with each passing train.
Take the one
I hold I fear
though the two
I love so dear.
Jon Wolston's Poetry Archive 