3 Poems

The sign sprouting from the hole

in the orange traffic cone is dirty,

its face caked by the smog

of passing cars.

People march by like worker ants,

collecting crumbs of comfort.

This is aging.

Deathdays mask the aluminum

face with beloved skins

and now, you can read only

what it lets you read.

If you look to it for sympathy, it

looks back.

If you ask about grief, all it will

tell you is that grief is a grey gutter,

a place you can’t stay.

Circled around the sign, three old

men burn their cigarettes down

to nubs, like children

in a game of straws.

Sitting with the first bloom

of your toad-lily between us,

we sip coffee and practice addictions.

Must we leave? I want to ignore the day

and curl up with you like tangled vines,

cloak our Wednesday in questions.

We don’t need all the answers.

I can wear the unknown

like your black morning dress.

The breeze rhymes with how you breathe

in Spirits. You have a gardener’s grace,

you weight my name with tender soil. I blather

like a bad poem, and offer apologies

for my housefly mind. We talk about words,

placing “soothsayer” on my tongue;

it tastes fertile. What is the beginning

of a day, you ask. A sleepy hornet walking

between two people with decisions to make.

While the sideways rain

pummeled my pruned muscles,

I thought I saw you

squint at me, until I turned

and saw beautiful faces

papering over open air,

like a bedroom wall,

at the end

of your street.

You greeted them,

with waves and half-winks,

And washed away

in the rain, tinging

the gutter stream

a neon pink.

While I, left outside

with your worn green couch,

stared at the wall of faces.

They looked at me

with an awe reserved

for a city pigeon

who refuses to cede

any ground, and so

is left behind.