Arguments at Work

On break at work they divide
the good and the bad, the more
and the less, and wear them like
epaulettes. Work is the more and
the good–farm work, you
couldn’t do it. You’d keel over.
Graveyard shift and lifting freight
hung over on a mouthful of sleep.

They stand the quarterbacks up in rows
and rank them by good and bad
before they bother with in between.

They talk about the moral fortitude
of pizzas and prices and usually
end on an uneasy truce.

I’ve heard bars stood up
to one another and wrecked together
with a crash of glasses and chairs.

When break ends, we go back to work
with all our small preferences
shining with a new identity.

Morning, Early Spring

This is the hardest time for the soul.
The soul wants prayer and slow air
moving through the body. And it's easy
to pray on this porch, but all you speak to
is the body. You say praises for the lips;
the "p" is a kiss to yourself. If your hands
are held together, you've pressed your own
fingers into each other and felt
the knuckles in the nest of your thin
finger bones. You've held out your arms
to the sun, to the wind, and felt the fine
hairs move both ways in this weather.
Meanwhile the soul waits for the cold night.

Night

It used to be that only the daylight hours
were numbered. Time’s heart started
beating at sunrise and slept
with the rest of us. And even though
I’m writing this in the middle
of the night, 2:14 in fact, I wish
we still had a long open night
without moments, without names.
The moon would move over you
with it’s wild squinting eye
worrying about what you might
be doing out when it was busy
spraying it’s phermones out
onto the grass while the Earth
wasn’t looking. That’s the long
hour of creation where the myths
are written with timeless lunacy.

Weather Change

In animism everything
is inhabited by a spirit.
Gods are in and of all things.

On this first hot day of Spring
all of the spirits have packed up
and left their bodies behind.

Even the tea I drink is a liquid
snake skin rolling limply down
my throat and staying dead in my belly.

Even I am simply a body today.
My heart is a ghost town with
a rusty weather vane still creaking.

Routine

My daughter goes to bed by the drumbeat
of routine: snack, brush, story, poems,
prayers, hug, kiss, I love you, good night.
It works so well that when she isn’t
tired, she sings herself to sleep.

But I also like the times that she makes
the drum's heart skip. I can see in how
she smiles that she’s listening to it
in her head. So when she says “one more
story” it’s to hear the poem's chant
echo out of dead air in the bedroom.
When she wants more poems, it’s to hear
the darkness pray out on its own.

I imagine this for her, of course.
What else could I do when she laughs
and says “no kiss, no hug,” but pretend
she’s balancing them both in the air
just above her small, tired body
and waiting until her eyes are just
about to close to let them drop down.