Homemade Kite for My Daughter

I made it out of clothes-hanger wire
and wrapping paper. The string
came from two balloons we'd left
hiding in a corner of the ceiling.
For more string, I used thread, it
was all I had. Then we took it outside.

I pulled it against the wind and let it go.
It stayed just above head-level
and jumped left and right. It dove
at the ground and back up. It tuned
backwards and inside out. Once
it jumped up higher than the house
and crashed hard into the grass.
It was like something that never
wanted to be born. It raged against
the line until the thread snapped, then
it fell easily to the ground.
The paper was torn, the glue and tape
gave. It was clearly done. This
was like many moments in life.
I took it in and set it aside, grateful.

The Music

Music is now the sound of time passing.
It's the last layer of the audible ether.
It's our soundtrack of silence.
If you sit in an empty room,
breathing noislessly, and let
the top-40 tunes echo in a sealed off
arbor of your brain so that you don't
hear your heart beat or your lungs empty,
you've found the new meditative place, our
tranquility. And when you hear
one of those songs again, you'll wonder
where you'd heard it before. What
you'll decide is that it's just music;
you know that sound--and then the door
in your head will shut and the silence
will come flushing back in with thin
tiled walls that crumble with the least listening.

Ways

My way to work is the one way
street that becomes two ways,
but it's still my way. It's the way
of the railroad crossing that often
stops me in my way and sends me,
not a new way, but another way,
a way I know, but not my way.

The post office is not a landmark
on my way to work. The post office
is just part of the way. It's part
of many ways to many places.
My way is the way of the post office
passing and the tracks letting me through.

When I have to go somewhere without
a way, I'm lost, even with directions.
It's a madman's way, filled with objects,
marking out turns I should take, warning
me I've gone too far. It's a strange way
that's not my way. It's his way. He
gave me the directions. If they take me
to a place I need, a place I want, then
maybe I'll take his directions--the third
light, the brick gas station--and make
a new way for myself in this new place.

Chore

The wind blew a dumpster across the street
into my yard at the exact spot where I put mine
on Wednsday nights. It belonged to the acounting
firm across the street. They no doubt thought
that it was mine, the next morining and that
they'd lost theirs. It sat there for two days.

As I rolled the dumpster across the street
in the middle of the night and parked it
at the corner where they usually keep it,
I wondered what they would think.
Was it stolen and returned after the thief
was haunted by a guilty conscience? Did
the trash company bring a new one?
Did someone borrow it for the weekend?
I walked back across the quiet street
in a clean breeze, having done the good deed
of milking a little mystery out of the world
and leaving a few people in wonder over it.

Letting You Know

Don’t try to tempt me; I can’t be tempted.
Maybe in a dark distant place in the center
of me, I’m tempted, but the door to the room
is locked and rarely is anything sent out.

When I do visit that room, long after
you’ve left, I find things lying on the floor
and the table pulled out from the wall,
so I put everything back where it was.

My heart is a waxing November moon.
There’s a face on it--a man, if you like--
that looks at you, but there he stays, far out,
surrounded by countless, even more distant stars.